By Ben Pensant

Every true liberal loves The Guardian. There’s been surveys and everything. Sure, the relationship between principled progressives and Britain’s favourite left-wing love-sheet has been somewhat rocky during the Corbyn years, and no-one has been more vociferous than me in demanding the paper’s subversive elements are dealt with in the strongest possible manner. (Or at the very least sent regular death threats on Twitter.)

But for every shameful column doubting Jezza’s brilliance or suggesting not all Leave voters are cross-eyed racists there’ll be another ten arguing for 100% inheritance tax or exposing the inherent racism of Thomas The Tank Engine. We may not always get along but when it’s right it’s very right and will be an important ally in Britain’s bright socialist future. Indeed, once Labour reclaim Number Ten it’ll take roughly the time needed to build a gulag and assemble a firing squad to condemn the G’s anti-Corbyn tendencies to the memory hole for good.

Sadly, it seems The Guardian as we know it may have slipped down that hole too. Because from tomorrow the paper will only be available in tabloid format. That’s right, the publication which for years prided itself on being a cut above the hate-filled red-tops will now have to face the embarrassment of being the same size of them. Which means progressives like me will be denied the smug satisfaction of opening a beach towel-sized broadsheet on the metro and pretending to read a riveting George Mondeo essay on the environmental benefits of bird-shit smoothies while covertly staring at the tits of the blue-haired feminist who gets on at Benton. (If you’re reading, sister, I’m the pale bloke with the beach towel-sized broadsheet who regularly pretends to read riveting George Mondeo essays while covertly staring at your tits. Fancy a bird-shit smoothy some time?)

All of which made my blood boil. Because as well as giving me one less way to fool strangers on public transport into thinking I’m more intelligent than them, the very real fear that a Bovril-slurping cretin who usually buys The Scum or The Daily Heil might accidentally pick up a copy made me ill. Not least because it will inevitably end up plastered over their broken living room window once they realise it contains neither Aldi coupons nor pictures of frail reality stars falling out of taxis with no knickers on. (Unless the G2 section happens to feature an interview with ironic Tory Tracey Emin.)

But as uncomfortable as I was with my beloved daily being read by white van drivers with tabs behind their ears and hate-crime on their minds, once I’d got over the shock I realised this could actually be a positive. Because the working-class – specifically the Brexit-voting variety – are notoriously stupid and gullible. Indeed, their capacity for believing any old shite is legendary, unlike those well-read, street-wise Remainers who a fortnight ago were convinced it costs £500 million to change the colour of a passport.

And while their stupidity should rightly bar them from voting in referendums or working at the BBC, it could also be a fantastic bonus. We already have a significant cross-section of stupid young people on board, most of whom went to good schools and know how to use knives and forks: imagine how easy it would be to mould the brains of stupid adults whose idea of a classy night in is a bottle of a Lambrini and an ounce of skag?

Perhaps making The Guardian accessible to the revolting specimens who clog up our decimated high streets gnawing on chicken bones is a smart move. Can you think of anyone more easy to indoctrinate with far-left ideology than the educationally sub-normal? And the benefit to society would be massive too, as brainwashing these impressionable goons in the ways of the left would keep them off the streets and stop them raping children. Or even better, stop them forcing innocent Muslim men to rape children.

Because as socialist firebrand Lee Jasper pointed out last week, the ‘Asian’ rape gangs would never have dreamed of abusing children if the white working-class hadn’t goaded them into it. As the northern native put it: ‘My own view is that we groomed Pakistani men into this aspect of working-class culture’ Hear hear. Because any idiot knows, Muslims are never responsible for anything they do, unless it’s something good like winning a bakery competition. To the likes of Jasper, Muslim men are pathetic, impressionable creatures so uniquely susceptible to raping teenage girls that all it takes is the existence of non-Muslim men raping teenage girls to turn them all into paedophiles.

‘Sexual violence and abuse remains rife in poor communities’ he warned, though clearly not in the poor communities where hundreds of Muslim men were found guilty of sexual violence and abuse. (And anyone who says otherwise is a racist Islamophobe like that ghastly Champion woman with the Dicky Davis hair.) The difference is that when poor white men are found guilty of raping teenage girls they rarely have excuses made for them by defiantly deluded leftists so out of touch even the Labour party won’t have him. And the reason, of course, is there are no excuses – it’s just what white people do. Especially the working-class ones.

Still, at least Jasper had the balls to acknowledge his own culpability – note the ‘we’ in his original statement. Not many failed politicians have the guts to admit they were one of the people who forced all those Muslim men to rape kids. Let’s hope he reports himself to the police before he does it again.

But the fact that Jasper was brought up surrounded by vermin yet forged a successful career as a political outcast shows just how easy it is to convert even the most moronic of proles. And with the right staff there’s no reason The Guardian can’t use their downsizing to help transform more of these ill-educated beasts into compliant leftists.

A useful move would be to utilise allies from the down-market end of left-wing media, such as Kevin Maguire of The Daily Mirror. Kev, of course, ticks all the right regressive boxes: terror apologist, die-hard Corbynite, pro-EU zealot, and one of the esteemed group of principled hypocrites who criticise people for sending their kids to private school despite sending their kids to private school.

Like many Guardian columnists and Labour ministers, Kev is also against grammar schools even though he went to one himself, demonstrating the sleek cognitive dissonance which these days all but guarantees a job at the G. Indeed, take away Kev’s pit-yacker accent and he’s basically Polly Toynbee with a smaller cock.

Polly, of course, geared up for the big Guardian re-brand by appearing on TV and spouting her usual hysterical propaganda, clearly dreaming of a lucrative future as the metropolitan Katie Hopkins so she can eventually afford that fifth home she’s always dreamed of. Her appearance on The Andrew Mars Breakfast Show a week ago was characterised by the same principled hypocrisy displayed by Kev, as she claimed evil boob-obsessive Toby Young only set up a free school so he could send his kids to it.

Predictably she was bullied by her fellow guest, Punch editor and Tory troll Lee Nelson, who pathetically pointed out this was better than sending his kids to a private school like she did. But Polly wasn’t going to play this charlatan’s game and responded to his comment in the manner we’d expect: by ignoring it. Indeed, the only time you’re guaranteed to see a Guardian writer obfuscate in such a brilliant manner is when someone brings up the paper’s equally evasive approach to paying tax.

Of course not all Guardianistas are as seasoned as Polly, and young bruisers like Abi Williamson and her big sister Owen Jones will have to get used to grappling with unsavoury chancers like Nelson now that they write for a shitty tabloid. Still, those two virtue-magnets can put their hands to anything and I fully believe in a few weeks we’ll have forgotten The Guardian was once a serious broadsheet and embraced its bright future as an out-of-touch caricature with as much moral authority as a six-hour opera about Myra Hindley’s love life.

It’s just a shame this didn’t happen two weeks ago as the Young scandal broke. Imagine what cheeky fun the G could have had splashing Toby’s leering, jacket potato features all over their front pages? They could have even updated the 1996 outrage over Blur’s ‘The Es And Whizz Don’t Work’ single by adding a simple rhyming twist to The Daily Star‘s classic ‘Ban This Sick Stunt!’ headline.

Still, with more battles to come there’ll be ample opportunity for self-righteous moral outrage. For now, there’s never been a better time for the left-wing media to forget subtlety, embrace populism and deploy every underhand tactic from phone hacking to journalists dressed as sheiks to promote liberal values and force as many people out of their jobs as possible.

In the meantime, I’m confident the list of suggestions I sent to Guardian editor Barbara Viner will be acted upon, despite the disrespectful lack of a reply. Fingers crossed we’ll soon be treated to Jeremy Corbyn’s weekly agony aunt column, Dear Leader. And with a bit of luck it won’t be long before we see the first transgender Page Three girl. In a burqa.

Phwoar!