How comedians can help us take politics more seriously
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Version 0 of 1. Steve Coogan fronts a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour party. Ed Miliband pays court to Russell Brand as Blair did to Murdoch before him. Nigel Farage’s highest-profile rival in South Thanet is, er, Al Murray the Pub Landlord. What are we voting for here – a new government, or a British Comedy Award? It’s striking how prominent a role the nation’s jokers are playing in this general election campaign. But why? And why do we trust professional piss-takers more than the sober-minded ladies and gents charged with looking after our affairs? Related: Steve Coogan urges a vote for Labour in 'knife-edge' election It wasn’t always like this. Even in the early 1980s, you’d be more likely to find the shadow foreign secretary, Denis Healey, guest-starring on Channel 4’s comedy floorshow Saturday Live (note to younger readers: politicians used to have personalities) than much traffic in the other direction. What we’ve seen in the last 10 years is an extraordinary boom in comedy’s popularity, as the youth appeal of 1980s-brand “alternative” humour (minus its political radicalism) cross-bred with the homely mainstream comedy it replaced. Even middle-ranking comics now play to tens of thousands of people on tour. They swarm across the airwaves. Their lives are pored over in the press. They’re even appointed to write newspaper columns and guest on Question Time – developments that have encouraged the public to see comedians as more than just clowns. That’s the phenomenon; the general election is its apotheosis. It’s not a uniquely British thing. Satirist Jon Stewart is famously the most trusted voice on the American left. Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement became the biggest party in Italy’s chamber of deputies, and Jón Gnarr became mayor of Reykjavik. (Hey, we Londoners have a joker for a mayor too!) Look at the crisis in our political culture and you’ll see why this phenomenon arose. We feel our politicians lack authenticity, that they’re chronically incapable of telling the truth or saying anything off-message. Comedians, on the other hand, are expert at speaking confidently in their own voice, at articulating uncomfortable truths, fearless of the consequences. Politicians fear being caught out or exposed; comedians have nothing left to hide. Politicians long to appear substantial – which is often comical to behold. Comedians celebrate their own insubstantiality. As voters, we feel politics speaks to us in a very narrow range of voices. Comedy, on the other hand, doesn’t require a PPE degree from Oxford, meaning its practitioners better represent the diversity of the UK. Politicians can also appear self-seeking – see lavish expenses claims or Malcolm Rifkind allegedly selling political access – whereas Al Murray has nothing to gain from campaigning in Thanet save worn soles under his calloused feet. All of which explains why, for example, a robo-Blairite like Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy takes Eddie Izzard with him on the campaign trail. Izzard looks, behaves and speaks human (albeit, as his own political career takes off, with ever-decreasing fluency). When elections were dramatic, they didn’t need jokers to spice them up. If #GE2015 were a passionate clash between antagonistic visions of how Britain should be run – well, that would be exciting enough thanks. Send away the clowns. But when all the mainstream parties believe in Trident, privatisation, austerity, “controls on immigration”, bombing Iraq, bankers’ capitalism and so on – well, that’s tragicomic, isn’t it? If you didn’t laugh to scorn, you’d cry. And looking at the lengths these politicians go to compensate for their conformity – Miliband’s stupid rock, the Tories’ “worst crisis since the abdication” anti-Scottish scaremongering – who wouldn’t prefer Russell Brand’s righteous outrage or Al Murray’s humane pisstake? Of course, comedians don’t have any unique insight into UK politics – no more so than teachers, social workers, or actual publicans, none of whom get to play a high-profile election role. They may also be motivated as much by ego as altruism. But are they turning politics into a joke? Not really. If anything, Coogan, Brand and Izzard are taking politics more seriously than the politicians. That’s where we’ve got to: it’s your Milibands, Camerons and Cleggs who are reducing politics to a farce. If we can’t have real people in politics, representing a range of interests and engaged in honest arguments about how we live, a few comedians mucking in and provoking things is considerably better than nothing. |