By Ben Pensant

A week ago today, while Boris Johnston dozed under cum-stained Union Jack covers dreaming of cupcakes, village greens, and genocidal imperialism, I was awoken at the ungodly hour of 10.30 by my bedroom door being violently kicked in. Before I had a chance to send Kev Starmer his daily death threat I was dragged from my bed by a trio of masked intruders, bound, gagged, blindfolded and bundled into the boot of what I assume was a Volkswagon Beatle, AKA ‘Hitler’s fanny magnet’. The vehicle raced around town at breakneck speed, honking its horns and mowing down brown pedestrians as my kidnappers snarled ‘I wouldn’t even rape you!’ at terrified transwomen.

Suddenly the car screeched to a halt and one of the men jumped out and spat at a gay couple enjoying a cream horn, returning seconds later in fits of joy having presumably planted a bomb in a Polish restaurant. This pattern repeated several times before we finally stopped. After ten minutes of nail-biting silence, the boot popped open and my shaking, slightly scratched body was dropped onto a hard, damp floor where I stayed for what seemed like an eternity, breathlessly pondering my grim fate. But none of these bleak fantasies came close to the fresh hell I observed when they finally removed my blindfold. Indeed, the sight of my three assailants in long black overcoats and Trump masks wasn’t even the most terrifying thing before me. No, that would be the pile of right-wing newspapers inches from my face: twitching, snarling, and splattered with what I prayed to Allah was chocolate milkshake.

That’s right. My kidnappers had been visiting newsagents and buying up Brexit-loving hate sheets. They were all there: The Scum, The Daily Heil, The Terrorgraph, sprawled on the floor like coiled rectangular snakes, venomous, inky, and ready to pounce. And plastered across the front page of each was the smirking, rotting face of the most evil woman in Britain. No, not JK Rowland, though both harridans share a love of large houses, bad make-up, and persecuting vulnerable men who creep into places they shouldn’t. I’m talking about the Queen, the wrinkled warmonger whose well-fed face has been dominating Tory press for weeks. And my masked captors planned to make read every last arse-licking word.

So there I sat in that cold, grey, warehouse – a perfect metaphor for Brexit Britain – as they poked me with bayonets every time I fell asleep. Unable to simply ‘ignore’ the Jubilee juggernaut and read about something more interesting like animal husbandry, I had no choice but to take it all in as the bastards had prised my eyes open with matchsticks like Roddy McDowell in A Clockwise Orange.

Page after page of corny reminiscences, pro-monarchy diatribes, problematic recipes for racist cupcakes. It was relentless, my only escape the brief seconds of bliss when the nationalist vulgarity became too much and I passed out, brutally cut short as my captors repeatedly doused my face with vinegar and force-fed me soggy cucumber sandwiches.

Finally, after what seemed like hours they tied me up again and threw me back in the boot, my face pressed against the piss-stained carpet. As disturbing as that awful trunk was, the pungent claustrophobia was actually a welcome relief from the horror of knowing the Jubilee had arrived and I was utterly incapable of avoiding it. After they dumped me on the sidewalk and drove off singing ‘I’d rather be a paki than a scot!’ I summoned the strength to crawl home then passed out in a heap on the doorstep, oblivious to my concerned mother slapping me and screaming ‘Has this little lazy shit been on the wacky baccy again?’. I think that’s when I went insane…

I know what you’re thinking. None of the above happened. And you’re right, it didn’t. But it bloody well felt like it did and that’s why I reported my fictional ordeal to the police. Because simply knowing that other people are feverishly buying right-wing rags to gobble up reactionary nonsense about crowns and corgis is ten times worse than abduction and home invasion. But the hypothetical horrors of Thursday morning were just the beginning. Because on Friday afternoon, as my battered body somehow found the courage to face the world, there was a knock at the door…

This time they didn’t even gag me. One punch to the face and I was out cold. I awoke tied to a rickety chair while a bald white man aggressively dabbed a paintbrush on my face. The smell of coffee and disinfectant suggested I was in some kind of community centre or – urgh – church hall, before my bloodshot eyes clocked the BNP paraphernalia and the horror sunk in. They’d parachuted me into a Jubilee party and there was literally no escape.

The Brexity brutality of this world was beyond anything I’ve experienced, and I once had a pint in Witherspoons. But it was the blatant parallels with an even uglier chapter in 21st century history that hit hardest. Indeed, replace the bunting, cupcakes, and face painting with swastikas, Bratwurst, and genocide I could easily have been in Nazi Germany. Powerless to protest I was forced to watch as raffles were drawn, skittles were knocked over, and plots to invade neighbouring Longbenton were hatched by goose-stepping librarians wielding cattle-prods and jam jars.

But I was most disturbed by the sheer volume of working-class attendees. Yep, the combined might of the government, the lying MSM, and the Queen Mother’s ghost had somehow convinced the most vulnerable, oppressed homeowners in the country that instead of spending their bank holiday campaigning for Palestine solidarity they should instead use their day off to celebrate a wealthy old goat they’ve never met. And revoltingly, most of these bootlickers weren’t even Royalists. Shamefully, some of them just fancied taking their kids out to have some fun and socialise with their neighbours on a sunny day. Pure evil. Because in 2022, neighbours are the last people you should be having coffee with – they could have Covid18, they could be paedophiles, they might have even voted Leave.

Needless to say, by the time my adversaries allowed me to leave, dragging me across the gravel and stuffing my trembling limbs back into that noxious boot, it was a momentary respite from the sound of flag-shagging toddlers singing Tyneside, Tyneside, Uber Alles. They dumped me outside my house once again but with no mother scrape me off the pavement and call me a ‘little wanker’ this time I simply lay there and wept for the death of democracy.

Okay, so this didn’t happen either. In fact, the closest I got to that disgusting offensive party was walking past it on my way to the police station to report the other offensive jubilee party at the spastics society next door. But I’m 110% certain what went on inside was ten times more totalitarian than the five paragraphs I just made up. And simply knowing they were happening was identical to being kidnapped and forced to pay hook-a-foreigner. Yet progressives like me were expected to simply ‘ignore’ or ‘put up’ with the knowledge that people we don’t know were doing something we don’t like, which is why we’ve been so thoroughly erased from the conversation that barely six million of us spent all weekend whingeing about it on Twitter.

Still, at least my trial was over. Or so I thought, until I awoke the next afternoon and my door burst open once again…

This time they didn’t kidnap me, they simply tied me to a rickety chair – the same pile-inducing rickety chair I’d moaned, wept, and wee-weed on the day before. After splashing my face with petrol and twisting my nipples, they shoved me in front of the TV, turned the volume up to eleven, used the bloodstained matches from the day before to prise my eyelids open, then subjected me to the most disturbing six hours of imagery I’ve ever witnessed. Yes, I’m talking about the Platinum Party Pageant Parade Thing: the cancer-blackened heart of the UK sprawled out on a rusty operating table.

The specifics have been mercifully erased from my memory, but the grotesque collage of horrors I witnessed continue to invade my psyche, an endless onslaught of epilepsy-inducing jump cuts spewed straight from Boris Johnston’s soul: Bryan Mack, Lee May, Rod Stuart, Steven Fry, Ringo McCartney, Elton Ben, Daniel White Bond, Richard Attenborough, David Peckham, Jason Dreamcoat, Ashley and his Banjo, Andrew Rice Webber, Lin Manuel Mirandinha, and countless other self-serving, soulless celebrities desperate to avoid the noose by cosying up to their Tory paymasters.

The only glimmer of hope on a hopeless day was the quiet dignity of Pooh Bear, forced at gunpoint to take tea and biscuits with Her Royal Whoreness before being shot, skinned and barbecued for wiping his paws on her silk table cloth – an unintentional allegory for the brutal reality of the immigrant experience. (What’s that, righty? You didn’t know that cute little creature was a refugee? Surprise, surprise. You’ll shit a brick when you find out St. George didn’t really kill that dragon.)

As well as the inevitable Nazi propaganda there was toxic masculinity aplenty too, as Katie Middleton was slapped on live television by her son, Prince Fuckface. Naturally, the fawning VIP guests pretended they hadn’t seen the assault but you can bet your bottom dollar if it had been Baby Archy the police would have shot him dead then knelt on his neck for nine minutes just to make sure. Still, no-one wants to see a woman physically attacked but if you’re gonna do it it might as well be to a Princess. And with access to the finest health care and tastiest scones I’m sure Katie will survive, unlike the billions of starving Brits forced to supplement their meagre gambling winnings by ramraiding foodbanks. And her ordeal was nothing compared to the hell I’d been subjected to. When my aggressors finally turned the telly off, wiped their cocks on the curtains and disappeared into the night I was utterly defeated, a shell of the confident, level-headed young man who three days earlier had cried in Wilko because they’d ran out of Vimto Bon Bons. (Gee, these Brexit benefits are everywhere, aren’t they?)

To my relief, Sunday came and went with zero visits from my tormentors, much like the three days that preceded it but without all the stuff that didn’t happen. It won’t last though and I fully expect these diabolical imaginary foes to return once word of my horrendous experience spreads all the way from Twitter to Facebook. Who knows what they’ll have in store next time but don’t be surprised if they pump me full of speed and make me sit through that new Ricky Gervaise special that I’ve spent the last few weeks telling everyone is the most transphobic thing evah despite the fact that I haven’t seen it.

This is what they do. And in forcing me to join with last weekend’s sickening display of patriotism they’ve denied me the hard-won right to criticise something I know nothing about. Because I now know everything about the Platinum Jubilee, and you won’t read about any of it in the press. But mark my words, when they dig us all up in 200 years and force our rotting corpses to watch the next one I’ll be the first to say ‘I told you so!’.

As for now? Well after three days of imaginary torture I’m psychologically scarred, in desperate need of painkillers, and have a huge stack of laundry to catch up on. But like Amber Hurd, I’ll survive. I have to. What is unlikely to survive is British society. Because there is something terminally sick about a nation that not only encourages but compels normal, working people to applaud and mythologise an ageing, wealthy establishment patsy who’s never done a day’s work in her comfy, privileged life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must dash. This blood-soaked JC4PM duvet cover won’t wash itself!