Bullying their way to the top

Welcome again to Thug Of The Week, where the world’s leading bullyboys, reprobates, narcissists and megalomaniacs run roughshod over civil society as they strive to outbid each other for that very moniker.

Who will step up with the most egregious display of big-swingingdickery and claim the title of Thug Of The Week?

Let’s find out right now. And I see we are favoured once again by the presence of our orange-hued American friend.

Sir could I invite you to start the bidding?

I want Greenland!

Just a little higher?

I want Greenland, sell it to me now or else, losers!

And the bidding is away to a strong start. Any advance, any advance? You sir, in that patch of smouldering ex-rainforest? Bulldoze the Amazon!

With you sir now at ‘‘Bulldoze

the Amazon’’. Two bids in and we have already reached wanton destruction of the planet’s ecosystem. Can we keep the momentum going? Yes, you sir, alone in the corner.

The glorious Democratic People’s Republic has today successfully launched two short-range ballistic missiles –

I’ll take that.

– as a solemn warning to the warmongering running dogs of South –

If I could just stop you there. The bidding is already with you at ‘‘launched two short-range ballistic missiles’’. Wait, I think I have a phone bid. I will just take this call…

Hello? I see. No I am sorry sir I need a definite bid – an unspecified threat of cyberattack on an unnamed Western democracy is just too vague. Yes that is a shame. Dasvidaniya to you, too.

Now where were we? Sir can I you push you any further than ‘‘Bulldoze the Amazon’’?

Brazil needs no help from the lamentable colonialists! If I want to put out fires I will bring my manhood to bear and urinate on them from a great height!

Well that is a bold claim but I am not sure it beats two ballistic missiles for world-class thuggery.

Also my wife is better-looking than the Frenchman’s!

And the bidding is back with you sir! Any advance? Anyone? America?

I am the chosen one!

Our orange-hued American friend goes full-blown messiah complex! And with that sir, you may well have your tiny hands on the Thug Of The Week trophy.

Going once, going twice. Any other bids? Anyone? Going three times – Fwoar! I say!

And it is a last-second appearance from … Britain?

Now now now look: I may have the floppy hair and chubby visage of a harmless buffoon. But if you will allow me to demonstrate as I fib outrageously, claw my way to power with a gnat’s whisker of the popular vote, suspend Parliament and give our constitutional conventions a good old-fashioned public-school seeing-to, there is far more to me than that. Carpe diem!

And with that sir you lead the bidding! Can anyone top this? America?

I got nothing.

Then going, going, gone! You sir are the Thug of the Week.

Of course I am. Now give me the trophy. I will take that microphone too. And the lectern.

What are you doing?

Just a little role-playing game. I will be Britain, and you be Europe. Aren’t you Britain already? Exactly. So act like a good European and give me everything I want.

And then what?

And then sod off.