Why is British politics so unfailingly funny?

4 months ago 129

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The British prime minister had just launched into one of the most important speeches of his career when it started to rain.

Like a deadpan comic refusing to break, Rishi Sunak kept his eyes fixed on the camera as the drops accumulated. By the time he got to the meat of his message — he was calling an election on July 4 — his jacket glistened with water.

And then the music kicked in.

From off camera, live in front of the nation, somebody was blasting “Things Can Only Get Better,” the unofficial anthem to former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s 1997 trouncing of the Conservative Party Sunak now leads.

For another one … two … three … four … interminable minutes, Sunak plowed through the lines of his speech like nothing was happening. And then, dripping wet, he turned his back to the cameras and walked toward the iconic black door of No. 10 Downing Street.

If you think that sounds like a scene from a political sketch show, you’re not entirely wrong. It’s part of the latest installment of Britain’s funniest and longest-running cultural export: its electoral politics.

“It was the most British thing — stuck there being rained on and not doing anything about it. It was kind of a metaphor for our country,” said Matt Forde, host of comedy podcast “The Political Party.”

Whether it’s Sunak or one of his several recent predecessors, spectators of British politics have been able to count on being thoroughly and frequently entertained.

Think Boris Johnson, then the mayor of London, stuck dangling halfway down a zipline, a bright blue helmet crammed onto his bulbous head, Union Jacks fluttering in his hands. (He eventually had to be towed away by rope.)

Or what about Theresa May, the short-lived premier who failed to bust her country out of the European Union and then was promptly busted out of office because of it. On a trip to Africa, she busted into a dance that one commentator compared to that of “a baby robot giraffe.”

And then there’s Liz Truss. So dramatic was her implosion as prime minister that a British tabloid broadcast a livestream of a ball of lettuce and asked which would last longer. The vegetable (that is, the lettuce) won.

It’s not just your impression. British politics is funnier than that of other countries, said Steve Gimbel, professor of philosophy at Pennsylvania’s Gettysburg College and author of “Isn’t that Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy.”

“In a certain sense, it traces back to the Roman notion of satire,” when poets like Juvenal and Horace used caricature to shame political figures to change their ways, he said. “In the case of British politics, they self-caricature.”

Never mind the tradition of Prime Minister’s Questions, in which political leaders trade scripted barbs to forced guffaws from their party’s MPs. Britain’s most rib-tickling episodes happen during unguarded moments.

Unlike in the United States, where ivy-league educated politicians like Bill Clinton, Ted Cruz or Ron DeSantis try to pass themselves off as Joe-Six-Pack everymen, many British politicians — especially from Sunak’s Tory party — present themselves with patrician sophistication that’s easily, and often hilariously, punctured.

“It’s the pomposity of the Brits that makes this funnier,” said Forde. “Parliament and all its traditions and all its arcane language and its grand setting. There’s an element of the class system. These are people who genuinely believe they’re better than us, and it turns out they’re fucking idiots.”

It doesn’t help that Britain itself is deflating, going from the empire on which the sun never set to a country that sometimes seems to be struggling to keep the lights on. That leaves many of its leaders trying to embody a sense of grandeur out of step with the geopolitical times.

“They end up looking like Ricky Gervais in The Office,” said Gimbel. “There’s a sort of tone-deafness when you set that mythology against the modern world.”

Finally, there’s the press. With a bloodhound scent for hypocrisy and pitbull tenacity, British journalists latch onto missteps and misbehavior that in other countries might be dismissed with gallic shrugs or aw-shucks grins.

Johnson being ousted as prime minister because his staff danced and ate cake during Covid lockdowns was (almost literally) a pie in his face.

One of the biggest scandals in recent Parliamentary history was over MPs who billed taxpayers for extravagances like a floating duck house and the maintenance of a moat. “I mean who the fuck has a moat, and they’re trying to get the taxpayer to pay for the draining of it?” said Forde.

This summer’s election has already gifted viewers with two storms in a teacup: Sunak’s decision to ditch a D-Day commemoration in Normandy to zip back to London for a pre-recorded interview, and a drip-drip of revelations about Conservative figures having allegedly gambled on the timing of the election shortly before the prime minister’s rain-soaked announcement.

That Britain’s recent knee-slappers have mostly involved the Tories comes down in part to the fact that the party has run the country for the past 14 years (and past five prime ministers). But it’s also because the airs of privilege waft more heavily on that side of the political divide.

So, will the U.K.’s (spoiler alert) incoming Labour government mean that British politics will become less funny?

“The cynic in me says ‘I doubt it,’” said Gimbel.

The jokes, he said, will just be of a different nature. “In the case of Labour, what you see is a sense of moral superiority and concern with being on the right side of history, and once that mask comes off, it turns out they’re just as self-centered and immoral as anybody else.”

Think Tony Blair’s dark fall after the invasion of Iraq and his more recent dealings with autocrats in places like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

In other words, Britain should brace itself for a harsher, less comfortable sort of humor.

Goodbye, Mr. Bean. Here comes the Joker.

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