Tory minister Huw Merriman said in an interview on Sky News that Radio 4’s The News Quiz was biased against the Conservatives – Sky News
A politician complaining about the press, said Enoch Powell, is like a ship’s captain complaining about the sea. The same, plainly, goes for politicians who complain about political comedy. So it was inevitable that Huw Merriman, a Tory minister, would be ridiculed for saying Radio 4’s The News Quiz contains too many jokes at the expense of the Tories.
All the same, he did make one fair point. The anti-Tory jokes, he grumbled, “didn’t strike me as being particularly satirical”.
He’s right. In fact, this is true of modern Left-wing comedy in general. It may or may not be funny. But it isn’t satire.
The purpose of satire, after all, is to mock the elite. But who exactly are today’s elite? Surely not the last, pitiful, inept, impotent dregs of this pseudo-conservative nominal Government, powerless even to enact the sole idea (Rwanda) they’ve had in the past two years. Some “elite” they are.
The real elite, these days, are the progressive Left. They have far more influence over our culture than any hapless Tory backbencher. Their worldview permeates our public sector, universities, NGOs, the entirety of the arts world, publishing, and for that matter the BBC. And in just a few months’ time, their takeover will be complete, because they’ll be in Downing Street, too, and doubtless have an enormous Commons majority to boot.
The News Quiz host Andy Zaltzman (R), seen here with occasional guest Angela Barnes – Joel Anderson/BBC
Satirists, therefore, should be mocking people like these, and the beliefs they’re so determined to impose on the rest of us. But how often, on the BBC, do you hear jokes at the expense of gender identity, climate change activism, DEI, the modern Left’s obsession with “decolonising” everything from museums to maths, and the weekly anti-Israel marches at which Hamas apologists bellow for “jihad” and “intifada”?
Very rarely. Because today’s political comedians almost invariably share the elite’s beliefs.
Enforcing authority
That hasn’t always been the case. In the 1980s, during the rise of what was known as “alternative comedy”, Left-wing comedians felt fresh and exciting, because they were rebelling against the cultural establishment. But today’s Left-wing comedians, by contrast, feel safe and boring, because they themselves are the cultural establishment. They aren’t rebelling against authority. They’re enforcing it.
This is bad enough. But what makes it worse is that they don’t realise it. They still think they’re rebels, courageously defying convention. When in reality they’re the most predictable, comfortable, craven conformists.
In short: they aren’t satirists. They’re court jesters.
Left-wing comedians will of course protest that it’s their job to mock the government of the day. But we’ll see what happens when the government of the day is, as it soon will be, Labour. I suspect most political comedy will still be at the expense of the Tories, this time lampooning their no doubt miserable efforts to recover from defeat. Any ridicule of the actual government, meanwhile, will be for not being Left-wing enough. Sir Keir Starmer, it will be endlessly agreed to thunderous applause from studio audiences, is really just a Tory, too.
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