BOSH!

What does JD Vance's meeting with Thomas Skinner really mean for the future of the UK?

“Good mornin’ and ‘appy Friday, you lovely, lovely people. We’ve made it to the end of the week. We’ve grafted ‘ard. We’ve locked up our ware’ouses, we’ve parked up our vans, we’ve bashed the local nonce, we’ve sunk a migrant dinghy before it could land on the beach. We’ve done ourselves proud. And now it’s time for a cheeky pint down the pub, before we head home to the wife for supper. And you know what? She may not be the best cook in the world, but she does ‘er best and we love ‘er anyway. Ah BOSH!”

It’s 2032. Friday night, and Lord Protector Skinner is making his weekly address to the British people.

His message never changes: Be proud of yourself and everything you’ve done over the last seven days. Despite the repetition and the cloying sentimentality, tens of millions of Brits still tune in, every Friday at 7pm, to hear Lord Skinner speak with the same puppydog enthusiasm that won the nation’s hearts all those years before, when he was just someone who failed to win The Apprentice.

Things have changed enormously in the UK since the Great BOSH Revolution of 2026, when the former market trader from Romford, with the support of his allies abroad, returned from the US at the head of an army, overthrew the corrupt British government, deposed the senile monarchy and installed himself as supreme leader of a newly re-minted Republican Britain.

Pretty quickly, all the problems the British people were told could never be fixed—or were just “part and parcel” of living in a vibrant multicultural society—actually were fixed.

The migrant boats were turned back before they could even set off, sunk in the Channel by the Royal Navy, or punctured by Scouts armed with powerful air rifles patrolling the nation’s south coast.

The ancient capital, London, was restored to its former splendour. The purse- and phone-snatchers: gone. The foreign food-delivery drivers: gone. The machete-wielding gangs of nappy-haired “youths”—gone forever.

A series of trials were held for the architects of Britain’s shameful decline. Of course Tony Blair was in the dock, and Peter Mandelson and Jack Straw. Former London Mayor Sadiq Khan joined them, and he was allowed a copy of the Yellow Pages so he could see out over the top of the stand.

These high criminals were also joined by the past leaders of the Conservative Party, who were just as responsible for betraying Britain—even more so, in fact, since they had pledged to be its defenders, to protect its customs, heritage and traditions, and to reduce net immigration to “sensible levels in the tens of thousands.”

David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were each tried in turn; although Sunak had to be tried in absentia. Johnson, true to form, put on quite the performance, ventriloquising Charles I before Parliament and demanding to know “by what authority this court seeks to judge me?” before quoting the Iliad backwards in ancient Greek. It did him no good. The unspeakable sentence reserved for traitors was passed again, and soon he was on his way to Tyburn like the rest of them, pulling out great clods of blonde hair and wailing and gnashing his teeth.

A British space program was hastily reinitiated, and the crew of the first mission were chosen as the most notorious members of the Asian grooming gangs, who had foolishly thought their heinous crimes against the nation’s womenfolk would go unpunished. Their destination: the sun. A one-way voyage.

And all the people of Britain were united under a powerful, catchy slogan; a word of primal energy and great power; four letters; an explosion; a word whose meaning nobody had quite figured out, and probably never would—but hey, what does it matter, because it just feels great to say it?

BOSH!

As far-fetched as it might seem, the prospect of Thomas Skinner actually having a political career came a step closer to reality this week. Skinner met with US Vice President JD Vance, who was on holiday with his family in the Cotswolds. The two men enjoyed pints of beer, a BBQ and even posed for a picture together that ended up on Twitter.

“Unreal night with JD and his friends and family. He was a proper gentleman. Lots of laughs and some fantastic food. A brilliant night, one to tell the grand kids about,” Skinner said.

Vance had leapt to Skinner’s defence on Twitter after the cheeky chappy started receiving death threats for one of his, frankly, pretty tame statements about life in the UK today. I think Skinner had said something like, “There’s something wrong in the UK.” I mean, who could disagree with that?

“Hang in there, my friend. Remember that 90 percent of the people attacking your family look like this,” the Vice President of the United States replied, with an accompanying picture of that disgusting middle-aged nerd from South Park.

The Daily Telegraph is now proclaiming Skinner “Britain’s most influential political figure,” and, just as importantly, asking how on earth it happened.

Dr James Orr, professor of the philosophy of religion at the University of Cambridge, has described Skinner as “England incarnate.”

“There’s something timelessly English about him,” Orr coos.

“It’s the energy, the sunny optimism, the authenticity. And maybe a glimpse into what’s been lost.”

Through sheer dogged persistence, Orr got Skinner to speak at a conference called “Now and England” for the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation, where he gave, in Orr’s words, “a barnstorming speech.”

According to Orr, “what was so powerful about it was it wasn’t political, it wasn’t point-scoring, wasn’t having jabs at the Governoment or Opposition. He talked in a straighforward and emotionally powerful way about his love of England.”

Since Skinner’s appearance at the conference, politicians from both sides of the political aisle have been desperately trying to court him. He’s appeared in a video about tool theft with Conservative politician Robert Jenrick, and been invited to Parliament by the Labour government to talk about small businesses.

So will Thomas Skinner run for office?

Danny Kruger, Conservative MP for East Wilshire and another guest at the BBQ with JD Vance, said he “hasn’t ruled it out,” an answer that’s as good as a “yes” without being a “yes.”

Lord Protector Skinner? Maybe. Or perhaps he’ll just be an MP.

What matters to me right now, though, isn’t daydreams about Skinner as saviour, as amusing as they might be. More important is what his meeting with Vance tells us about the Trump administration’s stance towards the UK and, in particular, the plight of its people, groaning under long oppression.

Promoting freedom of speech and liberty, defined as American values, has been one of Trump’s top priorities since returning to power, at home and abroad.

With regard to foreign nations, much of the impetus has come directly from the Vice President himself. During the election campaign, Vance warned the US might withdraw from NATO if the EU didn’t stop threatening Elon Musk and trying to censor Twitter, and then there was his speech in March, at the Munich Security Conference, where he told Europe’s gathered elite, to their faces, that they—not Russia or China—are the biggest threat to Europe’s future. You have betrayed the fundamental values that made Europe great, Vance told them: freedom of speech, freedom of association, the right to free and fair elections. The US will not come to your aid if you choose to crush your own people.

Both the President and the Vice President have voiced their concerns about the UK in particular. During his recent visit, President Trump poked a visibly flustered Keir Starmer about “censorship,” a clear reference to the new Online Safety Bill, which is already being used to limit access to political content the British government would rather its citizens didn’t see.

Just a few days ago, the US government released its annual global human-rights report, which warned that the human-rights situation in the UK has “worsened” in the last year. Freedom of speech has suffered. “Censorship of ordinary Britons was increasingly routine,” the report says, “often targeted at political speech.”

The report also adds that the government response to last summer’s Southport attacks—when three little girls were stabbed to death at a dance class by the son of a Rwandan immigrant—had been an “especially grievous example of government censorship.”

If the meeting with Thomas Skinner means anything, I think, it’s as a gesture of solidarity with the British people themselves, whom Skinner represents, as James Orr noted.

But more than that, I think it’s a recognition of the new rising force of populism in Britain, a movement that threatens to break the Westminster two-party system—Labour and Conservatives—for good, and not a moment too soon.