Worst Hot Take of the Week: 'Mugabe' Is the Same as Boris Johnson Trying to 'Take Back Control'

Welcome to The Worst Take of the Week – a weekly column in which NEO, AKA @MULLET_FAN NEO, pits two of the wildest takes the world's great thinkers have rustled up against each other.

Take #1

What's the story? Zimbabwe's ex-president Robert Mugabe has died aged 95.

Reasonable take: Mugabe went from an icon for the struggle for independence from the British colonisers to an authoritarian warlord ruler. He is now dead.

Brain rot: I will now make a comparison between Mugabe helping liberate Zimbabwe from British rule and Boris Johnson’s difficulties trying to "win" the UK's sovereignty back from the EU.

Many people turned to the internet today to express what they viewed as both "the good" and "the bad" about the former Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, who has died. To some he was a revolutionary who embodied Africa's struggle against colonialism, fought against racial persecution and stood up to western imperialism, with many failings and tragedies. To others, a murderous tyrant who hoarded much of Zimbabwe’s wealth for personal gain as his nation struggled deeply. Mugabe was finally ousted in a military coup in 2017 after over 37 years in power.

Born in Rhodesia, a former British colony, he was jailed for more than a decade without trial for criticising it being run by a white minority government. Once released, he helped liberate the country and form the new independent Republic of Zimbabwe, for which he overwhelmingly won the country's first election in 1980 and then never let go. He was also once quoted as describing Britain as "a very cold, uninhabitable country with small houses", which to date is the finest, most concise summary of this shit-hole island I've heard.

Many say that Mugabe should have ended his days in jail for crimes against humanity – and he no doubt had all the hallmarks of an evil dictator, famously boasting "only God will remove me" while violently repressing his political opponents, hating LGBTQ+ people and supporting Chelsea football club.

So it seems absolutely fitting within this context for British journalist Quentin Letts to take the opportunity of Mugabe’s death to tweet: "Mugabe was a bad man yet he helped win his country independence. As we have learned here this week, that's never easy."

Which begs the question: what level of British privilege do you have to be to equate Zimbabwe’s fight for liberation from the British-imposed oppressive white minority rulers to a bunch of posh, born-to-rule cunts trying to strong-arm Britain out of the EU so they can exercise complete, unchallenged control of the UK populous, like the good old Victorian days, with no interference from the outside world?

Take #2

What's the story? Boris Johnson jibbed that Jeremy Corbyn was a "great big girl's blouse" because he wouldn’t agree to a snap general election on the 15th of October that would result in the UK crashing out of the EU with a no deal Brexit.

Reasonable take: Good to see Corbyn batting away Johnson’s attempts in Parliament to emasculate him with sexist insults and only agreeing to a general election once an economically devastating Brexit option is off the table.

Brain rot: We, The Sun, shall send a reporter to the leader of the opposition's house to offer him a size 20 pink blouse.

On Thursday, a reporter from The Sun brought a pink floral blouse to the front porch of Jeremy Corbyn's home in Islington in an attempt to ridicule him after Boris Johnson appeared to shout "call an election, you great big girl's blouse" at the Labour leader in the House of Commons on Wednesday during PMQs.

The content of the exchanges between Johnson and Corbyn orbited mainly around the currently unpublished details of the government's no deal Brexit planning documents. Corbyn claimed the Prime Minister was "desperate, absolutely desperate, to avoid scrutiny", while Johnson repeatedly goaded Corbyn to fall into his no deal Brexit booby trap.

Corbyn has said he will only back an election after the bill to block a no deal is rubber stamped into law, but with his heart set on a hard Brexit, Boris has pitifully resorted to the modus operandi of a ten-year-old child trying to reverse-psychology you into letting them play Grand Theft Auto by calling you "gay".

Johnson continued his tirade in an attempt to beckon Corbyn into a snap election when speaking to ITV’s Robert Peston, saying: "I have never known a time in modern history when the Leader of the Opposition has refused to take part in a general election," adding that Corbyn may need to "get out the chicken suit". The official Conservative Twitter account then sent out a demented photoshop of Jeremy Corbyn in a chicken suit in a locker room.

This whole thing is beginning to look like Boris and his advisor Dominic Cummings believe they are playing some elite level Garry Kasparov vs Deep Blue strategy game, where ordinary people are blinded by the complexity, when it's closer to being forced to watch your auntie play Beehive Bedlam badly on the Sky box for hours after you finished school and just want to watch Johnny Bravo.

When you dissect the whole blouse thing, you'll find quite a few crushingly sad things about it. Firstly, that someone would go to such efforts to reinforce such a shit joke. Can you imagine being the "reporter" who went to M&S with the sole purpose of buying a prop so he could doorstep a politician with a patterned blouse? Secondly, how the UK's biggest newspaper is essentially okaying saying that anything feminine or effeminate is a sign of weakness. It was even noted that the blouse was size-20, which I imagine is what constitutes a "big girl’s blouse" to The Sun, which I remind you, once again, is Britain’s biggest newspaper.

With a study showing that men spoke for 90 percent of the debate on Brexit in Parliament, it's probably no surprise that chauvinistic bullshit games from the boarding school boys in charge continues to replace political discourse. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Boris daring Corbyn to drink cum out of a dress shoe next week to prove he’s got what it takes to become PM.

Winner: While The Sun getting a reporter to doorstep Corbyn with a "big girl’s blouse" is truly cringe, it feels like the last desperate fart of a dying dog of a newspaper, so Quentin Letts thinking comparing Boris Johnson to Robert Mugabe would actually strengthen the no deal Brexit cause wins for me.

@MULLET_FAN_NEO