Britain swapped prime ministers on Monday, and RT rushed out an explainer: "Starmer quits, Burnham rises: What you need to know about the UK's new leadership." Sounds neutral enough. Then you open it, and it reads less like an explainer than a eulogy someone enjoyed writing. * Quick vocabulary inventory from one article: Starmer is the "beleaguered predecessor" with a "toxic legacy" and "ever-tanking approval ratings," exiting into "crumbling social welfare systems" and an "increasingly two-tier Britain." Trump's line about the UK being a "poverty-stricken disaster" gets quoted the way you'd quote a friend who put it better than you could. * And this isn't a one-day mood. RT's recent UK file includes "The pathetic demise of Keir Starmer," "Starmer's party is dying, and hallucinating mad political gambits in its death throes," "Under Starmer or Burnham, the future of UK politics looks bleak," and "Starmer's successor will be swallowed by the same trap." Somewhere in that newsroom there's a thesaurus permanently open to the page marked 'doom.' * The load-bearing stat is the counter: Burnham is the "seventh British prime minister in just a decade." True! And RT adds, with visible concern, that these handovers happen through internal party contests — leadership changes without a public vote, it notes, gravely. An interesting worry, coming from a broadcaster funded by the Russian government. Number of times Russia has changed its leader since 2000: once — and the new guy handed the job back four years later. On the subject of choosing leaders without meaningful elections, we'd gently point the kettle toward the pot. * Here's the thing: you can run the exact same arithmetic without the organ music. Al Jazeera — also state-funded, also not shy — headlined it "Andy Burnham appointed UK's seventh prime minister in a decade." Same number. Zero adjectives. The count does its own work. RT's version needed 'toxic,' 'crumbling,' 'tanking,' and 'disaster' sprinkled on top, which tells you the number alone wasn't saying what they needed it to say. * And look at what the scary revolving-door story actually describes: a leader lost his party's support, resigned on live television, handed power to a rival, and went home. Messy? Absolutely. It's also something that can only happen in a system where leaders are able to lose power. A revolving door is irritating. It is also, technically, an exit. Some buildings don't have one. * When every single story an outlet files about a country is decline, decay, and death throes, the story stops being about the country. It's about who's paying for the coverage.