Purely as a distraction you understand, I’ve spent a bit of time these past few weeks keeping up on British politics. I mean, there’s only so much Trump and Herschel Walker you can take before your brain turns to grey sludge. Besides, the Brits usually play the political game with … a lot … more wit and cheek than we do. Even their farcical charlatans — Boris Johnson — demonstrate a passing acquaintance with literature and history. Not so many Marjorie Taylor Greenes clogging the aisles of Westminster, y’know what I mean?

But lately. Oh, my [bleeping] god.

Thanks (again) to the miracle of YouTube a Yank in the Midwest can observe in something close to real time the gobsmackedness (not a real word) of BBC, SkyNews, ITV and other mainstream news orgs, anchors and political pundits as Britain’s conservatives eat each other alive. As they throw the country’s finances into a death spiral and generally make a mockery of the idea of being serious adults. And then you get to British wags, the fringe characters vlogging from their disheveled apartments and cadging on-the-street interviews with dazed and confused citizens.

(This one with Scottish MP Mhairi Black is particularly good, even if you need sub-titles.)

It’s a mesmerizing entertainment. At least until you get to the stories of pensioners watching their power bills double over night, the interest rate on middle class mortgages jump a few hundred dollars/pounds a month as the conservative/Tory fire brigade announces that the only way to get the trains back on their tracks is to … wait for it … reduce spending on basic social services.

Predictably, much of the attention was focused on Liz Truss, now the shortest serving Prime Minister in British history. But as stiff, out of touch and clearly incompetent as she was, I couldn’t help but see Truss and the whole fiasco she was nominally managing as fully emblematic of conservative economics and performance here in the States. After all, as George Bernard Shaw is reputed to have said, we are “Two countries divided by a common language.” Point being, our political impulses are very similar.

Let’s take brief note of just a few of the key elements of Britain’s current dystopia. And please stop me when any of this sounds familiar.

1: Brexit. The membership of the Tory party — which is anyone of any age who can pay roughly $25/yr — is upset about stagnant growth and immigrants pouring in to allegedly “take jobs away” from Brits. Bolstered by fear-mongering on social media, the conservative government consents to holding a binding referendum, without any plan whatsoever of what to do if the “leave” forces win, which they do.

2: A leading player in the “leave” (without a plan) campaign is Boris Johnson. He denies he and his fellow conservatives have accepted millions in sketchy cash from wealthy Russians and Russian-linked players. This is proven false.

3: Post-Brexit, a bi-partisan investigation is launched into the influence Russian trolls played in inflaming anti-immigrant and anti-European Union sentiment. The conservative government is credibly accused of not even wanting to find out if this actually happened. The facts are ignored.

4: Lacking any kind of a serious plan, the departure from Brexit by the conservative government is unmitigated chaos. Far from improving Britain’s financial affairs, nearly all major economic indicators drift further downward.

5: Johnson himself is embroiled in a seemingly endless series of personal scandals, the impression being that rules, norms and laws apply to others, not him.

6: As Johnson’s situation worsens, fellow conservatives begin maneuvering even more aggressively for the backing of the party’s most impassioned members, the majority of them older and heavily opposed to the on-going influx of immigrants. Amid this, the criticism of “wokeness” on the part of softer conservatives and liberals becomes a popular rallying cry.

7: Johnson is finally forced to resign and conservative members, representing barely .2% of the British population, select hard-Brexiteer/Libertarian Liz Truss to lead them. She immediately selects “trickle down economics”, with fat tax cuts for Britain’s most wealthy, as the solution to the country’s problems. Markets go into convulsions.

8: Truss’s very Reaganomics/Bush-o-nomics/Trump-o-nomics/standard Republican-like plan is reversed within hours by a new chancellor who broadly hints that the next solution will be … serious cuts to social services, like the National Health Service.

9: Truss resigns and among the candidates considered as replacement is … Boris Johnson, who his own party canned barely a month ago, calling him “unfit to hold office.”

So yeah, as I say, the saga comes with a lot of familiarity for us Yanks. The stark exception being that after as much if not more gross corruption, malfeasance, incompetence and a deadly riot, our conservatives remain in lockstep adoration of their feckless leader.