"Okay, Matt, this is an important one and we need to get it right. If she stumps you, just brush aside whatever she's saying. Laugh it off."
"So I laugh?"
"Well don't *just* laugh, no. I mean metaphorically laugh it off."
*Whispering under his breath* "Just laugh...just laugh..." https://twitter.com/grahamlithgow/status/1265904641134538758

We'll do one of these every day. They're so bad at this.

Literally just cackling like an antique wind-up toy because he's struggling to comprehend her editorial position (which is "please just explain how this is supposed to work").

He actually says he can't work out her angle. They're so used to dealing with either hostile or sycophantic interviews that they can't handle someone just asking basic questions. Look at the Newsnight debacle: it's always about bias, about a grift somewhere underneath the words.

It's massive projection. The idea that the outrage might be genuine, that people are actually angry because of the contempt they've shown in the face of a tragedy so vast we're failing to even properly describe it is simply beyond their ken.

They think it's about fucking Brexit. They *assume* any criticism of their actions is an act of journalistic subterfuge to support some other, more comprehensible (to them) goal. This is a mindset echoed in conservative and nationalist movements worldwide.

No one could be protesting Trump because they actually *care*: they're all being paid by George Soros or something to trick the world into [insert antisemitic conspiracy of choice].

It's perhaps a corollary of the Great Man fallacy of history so beloved by white male historians: the 'people' are just a mob to be directed, a means to an end, a weapon wielded by the powerful in their struggles against each other.

We have no minds of our own, no sentience worth considering, we are robots - in the original sense of the term - destined for drudgery in the service of esoteric aims dreamed up by our betters.

Conservative MPs once questioned why they should bother helping council residents. "They never vote for us anyway." That's the mindset we're dealing with here. Governance as a route to power, equal in every sense to wealth or media influence.

Why do you think journalism, finance and politics are interchangeable career paths in Britain? All provide the same access to power without significant risk (assuming one is already wealthy and connected).

None of the Westminster elite in these positions give a single shit about the actual nature of the job. George Osborne is as comfortable a newspaper editor as he was a chancellor: they're basically the same thing at that level.

Never forget that this government treated the first-ever truly global pandemic, an era-defining threat, an unprecedented tragedy this is literally forcing us to rewrite the rules of human civilisation, as principally a PR crisis.

*that is

UGH TYPOS