Guardian worries that we look silly!

Terrific stuff from G Hinsliff in the Graun

The Tory leadership battle is making Britain the kind of nation we used to laugh at 

Imagine a faraway country, where an influential but controversial business [later to be revealed as the Daily Telegraph! I was hoping forJCB] with deep pockets hires itself a senior politician...scandal has always miraculously slid off this particular politician without leaving a mark.

This faraway country doesn’t feel quite so far away any more. [Especially] When Boris Johnson launched his leadership campaign...[Worse]...Nigel Farage has a weekly phone-in show on the LBC radio station, providing him with publicity a new fringe party couldn’t otherwise buy; he went off air during the European elections to comply with Ofcom’s broadcasting regulations but was back within days of the Brexit party topping the polls....[in breach of Ofcom's regulations?]

There has long been a revolving door between Fleet Street and Whitehall...But we’ve now reached a new level of incestuousness, and frankly it stinks..This is the kind of thing British people used to boggle at from afar, thinking smugly that it could never happen to us....the trouble with such rampant partisanship is it’s infectious, pushing others to pick a side or risk falling behind those who do.

The eyes of the Graun must be aching with beams. The bit about partisanship from a newspaper that has banged on and on! The classic Graun lifestyle stories and celeb trivia upholding a dignified and authoritative view of Britain ! Just today it has: 

'Then I saw RuPaul's Drag Race': coming out as X-gender in Tokyo – a manga 

The day I found my partner dead: ‘I touch your neck. It’s cold’

Experience: I killed my classmate with a javelin on sports day