Warning. Furious Friday. This blog post will contain swear words, and possibly quite a lot of them.

I’ve been thinking about Star Trek episodes I enjoyed. Does anyone else remember that episode where Captain Kirk decides to steer the ship into the sun? And have done this, and locked the controls into doing it, he immediately says “Does anyone else think they can do a better job here, and encourages the crew of the Enterprise to sit down and vote for a new captain. All the while the sun outside is getting closer, hotter, and far more dangerous. No… Okay, me neither…

And what about those insane Victorian generals? The Charge of the Light Brigade, where six hundred and seventy lightly armoured Hussars charged the Russian cannons at Balaclava? A little known fact about this is that Raglan decided soon after charging that he couldn’t deal with the grumbling by those under his command that he had given a stupid and suicidal order, so in full view of the Russian guns, he stopped everyone, and demanded that they vote on whether he should continue being the one who gave the orders. Anyone remember that? No…

The reason you may be struggling to remember these important pieces of trivia is that they never fucking happened. Because say what you like about Captain Kirk, he was a leader, and Lord Raglan too. And both of them knew that when you’ve given a stupid and criminally insane order, you don’t cede to the grumbling, you charge in hell for leather, and hope to God that you can come out the other side in one piece.

In other news, in one of the most cowardly acts of the Government, Theresa May has called for a snap election. Oh, yes, and trust me, there was a lot of material to wade through to fact-check that last statement. Whether or not I agree or disagree with Brexit is irrelevant. Now, the navigation is programmed in, and there is no way out of it. Section sixty-fucking-nine or whatever it is has been sent off, and our foreign policy has descended to the level of shouting at Europe “My dad’s bigger than your dad”, completely ignoring the fact that there are only four of us, and twenty bloody seven of them. And two of our guys are edging nervously away from our glorious ringleader.

What I want is a success for the country. What we won’t get is a success for the country if Theresa May can’t fucking take the criticism that comes with the job. Having this election will not stop the Opposition doing their sodding job. And their job, the thing they are paid for (!!), is to oppose, oddly enough. It’s there in the fucking name. This is apparently an election about strong leadership. Well, the single worst leadership decision I have seen in recent years (and yes, I include most of Trump’s temper-tantrums in this list) is the decision to take the hand off the tiller for the next few months in order to focus on campaigning for a snap election. If ever there were a fucking time when we need a strong leader – one who despite the criticism stays and does the job, one who doesn’t get distracted by criticism, but makes sure that the ship they are steering into an iceberg comes out the other side unscathed – it’s now.

And don’t fucking spout about democracy, and all that. Democracy put them there in the first place. We’re locked in a trajectory for the sun, and the only person with the keys to the navigation or the controls is the government. A change of government midstream would be catastrophic right now, one way or the other. We’ve been steered into a wall, and if we change driver now, there’s no fucking guarantee what could happen.

This is sheer posturing for effect. A little bit of smoke and mirrors. But now is not the time for this sheer infantile stupidity. Now is not the time to play for points, in the hope that with a few more supporters, the Opposition will shut up.

There is a historical event which leaps to mind.

In 64 AD, a fire broke out in Rome. This fire burned for six days, before finally running it’s course. And when the news of said fire was brought to the Emperor Nero, in one of his private soirees, he refused to call an end to his personal performance. He insisted that the great and the good should stay to watch him perform his piece, before they left to check their possessions, and evacuate their families. Rome burned, and Nero put on a fucking show. And then, at the end, after the city was a pile of cinders, he placed the blame for the fire on the immigrants of the time, and had them rounded up and crucified.

Think on that. Good morning.