Satirising The Coalition: Is British Politics Just Not Funny Anymore?

Satirising The Coalition: Is British Politics Just Not Funny Anymore?

Politically it has taken some hits, but after 18 months in power the Conservative-LibDem coalition has had a fairly smooth ride when it comes to satire.

You might have expected the government to provide more than its fair share of comedic inspiration, but even though Tory bashing is usually bread and butter for the satirist and the sandles-and-beard LibDems are easy pickings, Cameron and Co still stand relatively unscathed.

So what's getting in the way?

The failure to satirise the coalition has not been due to a lack of effort. Plenty of attempts have been made to skewer the happy couple.

Private Eye was quick off the mark with its spoof newsletter 'The New Coalition Academy', but that has never really hit home like the St Parish Albion News column did during the Blair era.

A 'Thick Of It' style docu-comedy about the Olympics, '2012', had a decidedly New Labour flavour and even though it was set in City Hall its writers made no attempt to parody Boris Johnson or his coalition colleagues.

More disappointing still was the ill-fated Channel 4 satire show, 10 O’Clock Live. Many hoped it would take up the coalition challenge - like The Thick Of It did under New Labour, Spitting Image under Thatcher, or The Daily Show in Bush’s America. And with Charlie Brooker, Jimmy Carr and David Mitchell in its cast it had the talent to do so. But all the big names and expensive advertising still didn't save it from being beaten by Question Time in the ratings.

Some comics and writers believe that the coalition is hard to satirise because - paradoxically - doing so just feels too... easy.

Tim Bradshaw, whose cartoons appear regularly in the Guardian, finds satirising the Coalition "almost feels too cruel" because "satire takes people down, rather than kicking them when they’re already there".

Neither Cameron, nor Clegg, are all-powerful comic villains in the way that Margaret Thatcher, Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair post-Iraq were, comics like Bradshaw believe. Without a strong villain to attack, really biting satire looks a bit too much like bullying.

John O’Farrell, lead writer on Spitting Image and now creator of Newsbiscuit, a satirical website, believes we are well overdue a satire boom. The comedy under New Labour is "just as applicable now, when it comes to the style of governance", he said. It just might be that the cuts have not yet trickled down to enough people to create a sense of urgency.

Richard Ingrams, who founded Private Eye in 1961 and in the process started Britain's first 'satire-boom', says that the problem is down to nervous executives more than some weakness in the 'spirit of the age'.

"Chris Morris has done very good and quite savage satire," Ingrams said. "But it’s more and more difficult though to get stuff like that on, and particularly with the BBC. It’s not to do with censorship, there is just a sort of bureaucracy that has moved in and is vetting everything carefully. Things have to be submitted in advance to lots of different people, and that is an obstacle."

For now the scarcity of coalition comedy has left many simply waiting for the next series of The Thick of It, which won plaudits during the Blair and Brown governments for its alarmingly realistic portrayal of life in Westminster. But will it really succeed where others have failed? Ian Martin, a writer for the show, agrees that there is a challenge ahead. For him, “both physically and ideologically, the coalition is almost beyond parody", he said.

Regardless, there is more 'Thick of It' coming -- and Martin says the show will stick to its guns.

“Ideologically, their blatant assault on the welfare state is scandalous," he said. "The front bench have such a disconnected, cartoonish look about them. They all have that overcooked 'innocent' look: ‘don't blame us, we have to reduce the deficit’. It’s bullshit. They're horrible”.

Such indignation is satire's catalyst. So maybe there's hope for coalition comedy yet.

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