4. Politics Blog

In this joke of an election, who needs satire?

Ideology is dead and politics is now a theatre of personality. No wonder we

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with Ballot Monkeys, a sitcom to be written and broadcast in the seven
days running up to the election. All four of the main parties will be
satirised, from Ukip preposterousness to Labour ineptitude. Writers
Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin are veterans of political comedy (Drop The
Dead Donkey was a brilliant indictment of the Major years) and this TV

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can just let them speak for themselves.

As well as being the last great British satire show, The Thick of It
was actually an old fashioned family sitcom. Its laughter lay in strong
characters in classic love-hate relationships that made everything from

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setting was really just scenery. Yes, it provided a plot and
contextualised the characters’ actions. But it’s hard to think of one
concrete, significant Labour policy that was satirised or one
philosophy that was scrutinised. At the end of the second series, when
the election was called, what did Malcolm Tucker tell the Labour staff
they were fighting for? Their jobs. The Thick of It was perfect
political satire for an age in which politics as a moral enterprise is
slowly dying. What we’re left with is politics as the theatre of
personality. And the personalities are ripe for parody.