How to find the humour in politics when everything is so bloody serious

As a political sketch writer, my job is to find something funny to say about the day’s political goings-on. Luckily, the conduct of MPs lately has made finding the joke extremely easy

Once upon a time, 150 or so years ago, politics was a nobleman’s pursuit. Not noble in the honourable sense, of course. It’s never been that. Noble in the sense of being rich. (Once upon a time, “noble” was the thing rich people decided to call themselves, to make themselves sound noble, instead of just rich, which is what they were, and noble, which is what they almost certainly weren’t.)

But it did mean it was something of a closed shop. Those who wrote about politics and goings-on in Westminster – Grub Street hacks, if you will – did so because they couldn’t actually take part in it themselves. To bring these grand people down a peg or two, to lower them to the everyday level, was a noble, in the honourable sense of the word, thing to do.

But those days are gone, and never have they been more gone than now. As a political sketch writer, my job is to find something funny to say about the day’s political events. To knock the high and mighty down from their perch, hopefully in some insightful or artful way.

I am regularly told, by friends and colleagues, what a glorious time it must be to be doing such a thing. It is not a view I am convinced I share. It is not merely that what is happening in politics is desperately depressing and deadly serious. It is that the participants in the events do not require any assistance at all in lowering themselves. Rock bottom has been reached. Nothing towers. Nothing soars. Statesmanship is a distant memory.

The times we live in will be remembered as historic. But the people who shaped them will not. They are out of their depth. The hands are on the controls of machines they do not understand and cannot command. They are not the punchline. They’re the entire joke.

Yours,

Tom Peck

Political sketch writer