Welcome to the terminal stage of the grand human experiment, where the leaders of the so-called free world have finally abandoned the pretense of governing reality in favor of moderating it. We find ourselves staring into the abyss of Ella Baron’s latest satirical offering, a visual autopsy of the pathetic struggle between the beige authoritarianism of Sir Keir Starmer and the tangerine nihilism of Donald Trump, with Elon Musk acting as the chaotic neutral arsonist in the background. It is a spectacle of such profound stupidity that one wonders if the heat death of the universe shouldn't be hurried along as a mercy to the rest of the cosmos.

Keir Starmer, a man whose personality suggests he was constructed entirely out of high-grade damp cardboard and legal precedents, has decided that the solution to a nation tearing itself apart is a stern talking-to for the internet. Following the recent spasms of violence in the UK—riots fueled by the kind of digital sludge that passes for discourse these days—Sir Keir has pivoted to his natural habitat: the boardroom of 'Doing Something While Achieving Nothing.' He talks of social media bans and stricter regulations as if he’s dealing with a rowdy tavern in the 1890s rather than a borderless, algorithmic hydra that eats his lunch every single day. Starmer represents the quintessential failure of the modern technocrat. He believes that if he can just find the right legislative sub-clause, he can magically erase the deep-seated societal rot that his own class has spent decades cultivating. He is King Canute, standing on the shores of the Thames, ordering the tide of digital misinformation to stop wetting his sensible shoes. It is embarrassing, yet the British public, in their infinite capacity for being misled, treats this as 'leadership.'

On the other side of the Atlantic, we have the return of the Great Disrupter, Donald Trump, whose recent re-emergence on X—the platform formerly known as Twitter and currently known as a billionaire’s mid-life crisis—has sent the global chattering classes into a state of hysterical dehydration. Trump doesn't need a platform; he is a sentient platform of grievances. His interaction with Musk is not a political alliance; it is a merger of two vast, echoing voids of ego. The idea that Starmer can 'ban' or even 'regulate' this level of noise is laughable. We are witnessing a clash between an 18th-century concept of the state and a 21st-century realization that the state is obsolete. While Starmer drafts memos, Trump and Musk are busy rewriting the lizard-brain impulses of the masses in real-time.

The suggestion that social media bans are a viable tool for governance is the ultimate admission of defeat. It is the political equivalent of a parent taking away a toddler’s iPad because they can't figure out how to be a parent. The riots weren't a political movement; they were a collective mental breakdown livestreamed for engagement metrics. By focusing on the 'ban,' Starmer avoids the terrifying reality that he has no control over the physical world. It is easier to police a tweet than it is to fund a library, fix a crumbling health service, or provide a reason for the youth to do something other than throw bricks at mosques. The ban is a performative shield, a way for the 'sensible' Left to feel like they are protecting democracy while the foundations of that democracy are being sold for scrap metal.

Meanwhile, the Right continues its descent into a moronic fetishization of 'free speech,' which in their lexicon means the right to scream 'fire' in a crowded theater and then complain when the smoke makes them cough. They view Musk as a savior, ignoring the fact that he is simply a more technologically advanced grifter than the politicians they claim to despise. The Ella Baron cartoon captures this perfectly: the sheer, unadulterated absurdity of a world where a lawyer in a suit thinks he can win a fight against a golden idol and a rocket man using nothing but a clipboard. It is a war of the impotent against the insane, and the rest of us are expected to pick a side.

Ultimately, this isn't about safety or the rule of law. It's about the desperation of an aging political elite that realized too late that the gates have been smashed open from the inside. Starmer’s crusade against the algorithm is a funeral march for the concept of national sovereignty in the digital age. He can ban every app on every phone in the United Kingdom, and it wouldn't change the fact that the people are angry, bored, and increasingly untethered from a reality that has nothing to offer them but higher bills and more 'content.' We are watching the slow-motion collapse of a civilization that traded its soul for a high-speed fiber connection, and the only thing Keir Starmer can think to do is ask for the password to the router. It would be a tragedy if it weren't so profoundly, bone-deeply hilarious.