One of the biggest criticisms of the Conservative snap election campaign is that it failed to make the most of the Tories’ economic record. Since then, former minister Rob Halfon has said the party ought to correct this by rebranding as ‘the Workers Party’.
But is Theresa May actually putting people out of work? Mr S only asks after bumping into Rory Bremner at the inaugural fundraising dinner of the Petra Stunt Foundation – in aid of PS Place – this week. After a tumultuous few weeks with little reason for cheer, the impressionist lamented that May’s recent antics meant that it was harder than ever to come up with original material:
‘So, here’s the thing, part of my job is to make politicians more ridiculous than they really are. Have you any idea how hard that is, right now? Honestly, people say “oh you’ve got so much material”, yeah those bastards are writing it twice as fast as we are.
Remember Tom Lehrer, the American satirist, said that satire was obsolete the day they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger. We’re so far along from that now, we’ve just gone through the wonderful time of Tony Blair as Middle East Peace envoy, a job he gave up last year, by the way.’
Still, despite the stiff competition from the subjects themselves, Bremner was able to crack a few gags at the expense of Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott:
‘I saw Theresa May give her speech after the election and she didn’t modify, she didn’t change hers at all, did she? Came back the morning after the election, same speech, ‘we’re going to provide certainty and stability’, I thought where have you been for the last 12 hours? Don’t you read the newspapers? Quite extraordinary, and Jeremy Corbyn as well saying ‘we’re in a position now, to form a government’, you thought, who does his maths, Diane Abbott? Just bizarre.’
Meanwhile, Bremner has at least found a positive to Brexit:
‘Let’s look at the positives on Brexit, we’ve seen a return to traditional values, certainly if the pound is anything to go by, that’s back to where it was in about 1983.’
Given the current state of the government, Mr S can’t see things improving for Bremner anytime soon.
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