This is a fair (and simple) description, and it's pretty compelling for the narrative that UK satire has run out of ideas and/or is part of the establishment elite, but I think it's a more complicated picture than that https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1290919478268579841

Firstly it's worth saying these two shows aren't the only satires on TV - The Daily Mash, The Last Leg, Frankie Boyle's New World Order and Charlie Brooker's various "-wipes" have had more of an impact (and will inspire more people) than either HIGNFY or Spitting Image in 2020

That's mostly because how we've consumed satire has changed - we don't watch 30 minute episodes of satirical sketches or panel shows, we see individual sketches or routines from those shows on our timeline, mixed in with other (arguably more popular) online skits

It's naive to think that, in 40 years time, we'll look back on "the state of UK political satire in 2020" and not include online viral sketches (from people like Michael Spicer, Munya Chawawa or Mo Gilligan) that have had a far bigger impact than a weekly panel show

And that touches upon a much bigger issue for mainstream UK political satire - the breakdown of an "accepted" mainstream culture into infinite numbers of subcultures, each with their own specific reference points and truths that need to be accepted for the satire to work

At a basic level, jokes require a shared "truth" that we all accept so that it can be subverted - eg, for the Thatcher vegetables sketch to work the audience has to first accept the idea that Thatcher is powerful and her cabinet is filled with meek idiots

The same joke wouldn't work with (say) Ed Miliband because that's not his perceived public image. Yes, a satirical show can magnify and sometimes overwhelm the image (and that's what Spitting Image did with Thatcher), but if that core image doesn't ring true, then it won't work

That's what a lot of "unfunny" satire is - a joke built on a premise that you don't think is true. A lot of the right-wing people who complain about comedy on the BBC not being funny do so because they don't accept the assumed truth that Boris/Farage etc are lying chancers

For any joke to work, you need to accept the narrative behind it - and as disillusionment with mainstream politics grows and the centre collapses, our understanding of politics over the last 40 years becomes more warped, and our ability to entertain other narratives diminishes

Look at the number of contradictory narratives for why the UK voted Leave in 2016: promise of NHS funding, Russian interference, hatred of EU bureaucracy, hatred of foreigners, love of foreigners outside the EU, because Corbyn said Remain, because Corbyn was a secret Leaver...

Making a joke about Brexit that both Leavers and Remainers will find funny is impossible - not because they have different *opinions* on Brexit, but because they have a completely different understanding of the *truth* about what happened in 2016, and about what's happening now

(You might say this has always been the case - I wasn't alive in the 1980s so I don't fully know - but I think the difference now is that social media and partisan news sources have broken traditional media's monopoly on the truth so that one can now pick the one you agree with)

How can satirists speak "truth" to power if we all have our own atomised version of the truth that is completely anathema to between 50 and 80% of the rest of the country? How can you make jokes that work across infinite different realities?

The simple answer is... you don't. You recommission Spitting Image and keep HIGNFY on less because they're biting satire but more because they remind you of a simpler time when things made a little bit more sense.

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