Comic timing

New Labour inspired a golden age of political comedy. William Cook looks to satire’s future

Although few will mourn Gordon Brown’s departure, his drawn-out demise should be a source of sadness for comedy aficionados, be they red, yellow or blue. For New Labour’s most unlikely legacy was to inspire a renaissance in political comedy. It may have ended with a disgruntled whimper rather than a bang, but for anyone with a taste for satire these were 13 golden years.

When Tony Blair first swept into Downing Street in 1997, a lot of left-wing comics seemed bemused. They’d been attacking the Tories for 18 years. Now that the Labour landslide they’d yearned for had happened, they didn’t quite know what to do. ‘We were scuppered,’ admitted Paul Thorne, a stand-up comic at London’s top comedy club, The Comedy Store, recalling the wave of euphoria that greeted New Labour’s triumph. Yet it didn’t take these comics too long to get their second wind.