With eyes open and hearts brave, we must watch this video of Boris Johnson eating a scone. This is what we’ve come to: Boris Johnson eating a mediocre baked good is somehow a sort of galactic-brained version of everyman campaigning, a highpoint of election conversation, and a stunning and remarkable example of strategic nous. When really, it looks like grainy VHS footage of a toddler eating a cracker for the first time re-enacted by a man who, on every other version of Earth, is the village weirdo famed for acting erratically near urinals, and not, as we have it here on Earth-Prime, the most politically important man in the United Kingdom. But there we are.

Think of the scone. It is the most contentious item of food in our society. That’s why it was deliberately chosen to be hoovered into the vacuum of Johnson’s body, by aides unseen. Cornwall and Devon have some sort of longstanding blood feud over which order you’re supposed to do the jam and cream in (cream-first makes an unpalatable mess, that’s all I’m saying on the subject). It comes in either savoury (cheese) or sweet (currant, or “unflavoured”) versions, and nobody can seem to agree on which of them is correct. No other country on Earth gives a single solid shit about them.

BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) “The reason for putting the jam on first is because jam is adhesive”



Conservative leader Boris Johnson prepares a scone, saying, when asked about the correct order of jam and cream, that he "couldn't remember, so I guessed"https://t.co/lbGIAxEpOv pic.twitter.com/9DKu3krqqT

You have, at some point in your life, met your significant others’ family and discovered that, ah, they say scone differently to you, and had to have a smiling-but-not-really-smiling fight-but-not-really-fight with their dad about it that leads to him storming off to the garden to smoke exactly three cigarettes really quickly in a row. The scone was already a political issue before it entered the wet garbage can of Boris Johnson’s mouth. If this goes much further an actual war might break out.

What order does cream go on a wreath, Boris? Can we maybe get Andrew Neil to ask him that?

Watching this video, it is particularly impossible to envision Johnson as the all-shagging ur-lothario the newspapers make him up to be. The man eats a scone with the elan of a toddler banned from the Play-Doh table at their third nursery in as many months because they keep mashing all the colours together. Look at him, smiling, cream smeared over his wet pink lips, the word “DERICIOUS” garbled through a mouth full of spit, the close shot of his eyes, watery and afraid. This? This is your shagger god? Can we not, honestly, do better than that?

Crucially, in the most contentious week of the election so far, in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s redacted dossier and the NHS scandal, amid frantic calls for the prime minister to face Andrew Neil for a grilling, and beneath louder and louder calls to investigate the impartiality of the BBC, why exactly has the broadcaster decided to tweet this, today? There’s no news hook, there’s no follow-up story where Johnson tucks his tie into his shirt and nods gravely at nurses, there’s no flood to mop up. It’s simply a 30-second chucklesome vid-bite about the prime minister charismatically not knowing what order jam goes on a scone. What order does cream go on a wreath, Boris? Can we maybe get Andrew Neil to ask him that?

Other things to hate or enjoy – delete as appropriate

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I set trends dem man copy.’ Michael Gove and Stormzy. Photograph: Reuters

Unfortunately for all of us, Michael Gove is still allowed unfettered access to the internet. To recap: on Tuesday, Gove commented that Stormzy, who had urged his young fans to register to vote, was a “far better rapper than he is a political analyst”. Then he quote-tweeted a joke from Angela Rayner saying he was crap at both with the retort – and I am sorry to both of us here, both me for having to type it and you for having to read it, but try not to imagine Michael Gove’s little pink face, floating like a balloon over the following sentence – “I set trends dem man copy”. Again, I’m sorry.

This week’s biggest Twitter controversy? Jo Swinson’s squirrel problem | Joel Golby Read more

As has been discussed with far more nuance on these hallowed pages, Gove’s comments were akin to the digital version of blackface, but also very crucially they were the first historical instance of someone putting not one foot in his mouth, not two, but somehow three, then five, then 10. The worst thing about all of this, sadly, is that probably around three or four very highly paid young analysts brainstormed this tweet for about an hour before they sent it, and the resulting high five they all gave each other afterwards probably reverberated so solemnly and so hard that the boys at Eton heard it and had a commemorative meal in honour of it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘A bit Web 1.0.’ Dominic Cummings in London, November 2019. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

After Johnson’s foray into the “73 questions” format a couple of weeks ago, I predicted that candidates across the parties would have to try and wrestle the language of the internet into a harness and have a go at speaking it. And it seems that Dominic Cummings heard me loud and clear, seeing as he’s sparked up again on his old blog. It’s a bit Web 1.0, the blogpost – at this rate we’re only two weeks away from Cummings, in an emo fright-wig, posting a fringe-heavy selfie on MySpace and listing “nobody” in his eight top friends.

But here’s my theory: in his own little way, Cummings is shitposting

But then with sentences like “Days after the 2016 referendum, I emailed all of you to say thanks for your heroic efforts. I also said – keep an eye on my blog, if Brexit is in danger then I will send up a ‘bat signal’ here. Here we go…”, we don’t really need polish and glamour, do we? We need a Wordpress template and someone’s “good with computers” stepson to refresh the domain name for us.

Cummings’ Bat Signal is written a little bit like those pop-up adverts you see for making £40,000 a month working from home – “the VL team explored thousands of scientific papers during the referendum to figure out the most effective tactics and the best use of money” – and you do always quietly suspect he’s going to try and sell you back pills halfway through.

But here’s my theory: in his own little way, Cummings is shitposting. Think about it: he’s doing the job of getting the message across to the people who want to hear it, the recurring motif of internet usage in this election so far, but also wrapping it in just enough bat signal irony to get a rise out of the other side of the debate at the same time. Electoral bait written in the tone of the concerned citizen. Big Dommy Cummo, you’ve done it again.

• Joel Golby is the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant