Back in the early 1990s, when Rob Newman and David Baddiel were selling out vast arenas, it was briefly posited that “comedy is the new rock’n’roll”. Today one might surmise that “politics is the new comedy”. In addition to the reality television star in the White House, the party with the largest vote share in Italy’s 2018 elections – Five Star – was founded by a former comedian, while the favourite to win this month’s presidential election in Ukraine is also a comedian.
The funny side of Boris Johnson has been fading for some time. But it is still clear that the man currently favourite to be Britain’s next Prime Minister has milked his comedy value effectively over the past twenty years, with Have I Got News For You playing a particularly important role in raising the national profile of the blustering blond buffoon.
There is nothing funny about the political consequences of men such as Donald Trump and Johnson, but it is hard to deny that they generate plenty of the kind of ‘content’ that entertains their opponents on the liberal-left.
