And anyway, there's already too much humour in the news media

Jeremy Hardy
Wednesday April 4, 2001
The Guardian

Some of you will be relieved to know that this is the last column I shall be writing for the Guardian. Others may be sorry, and I thank you for that. I have been told that my column has run its course, which is a self-fulfilling accusation, and also that it doesn't have enough jokes. Since my background is in humour, it was expected that I would contribute more eagerly to the gag count in the paper.

My own feeling, however, is that the increasingly humorous tone of the news media is not an illuminating, penetrating, invigorating or even uplifting trend, but a whimsical levity calculated to reassure us that nothing really matters any more. A little chuckle and everything's alright again in our postmodern consensual culture. In fact, much of satire, and even much of investigative journalism, has become part of a self-cleaning establishment, a purgative tonic for the belly of the beast.
Frankly, I do not see my job as keeping our rulers on their toes; I'd rather see them hanging by their feet. Perhaps I should have been more ironic, but then you might have thought I didn't mean it, and I did. I certainly believe that a sense of humour is essential, but as a way of looking at the world, not as a way of packaging it for public consumption.

In any event, I was given the option of staying on until the election but also told that I shouldn't use the column as a platform for the Socialist Alliance. Since the fact of the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist party putting up candidates is the only interesting thing about the election, that struck me as a bit of a limitation; and since I'm away for Easter, I may as well sign off now.

I won't suggest that you vote for the Socialist Alliance; I'll just tell you that I'm voting for it, for some skittish reason of my own. You vote in whatever way seems right. I can't for the life of me recommend that you vote Labour, unless your Labour candidate is one of a very honourable handful, in which case the alliance will not be contesting the seat anyway. Anyway, I don't suppose you'll be short of people trying to get you to vote Labour. Whichever way you vote, most of the exciting developments in politics are happening outside the electoral orb.

Those who are enjoying power accuse us malcontents of being compulsively oppositional. "Why are you people always so angry?" they ask. We should reply: "Because there is so much to be angry about and the Body Snatchers haven't got us yet", but I'm afraid that they would counter with: "Our time has arrived, it is pointless to resist." I don't know what is more distressing, the triumphalism of those who crow that they've won, or the fact that so many of them would never have settled for such a victory a few short years ago. At least half of the government's media supplicants would have railed in fury if the last government had done the things they tolerate from Labour.

The Tories are not going to get back in. The people who say they might are mostly Labour loyalists, who are perhaps waiting to surprise us with some newly emerging piece of venality. Perhaps Robert Maxwell is alive. But the Tories won't win. Labour will not even be forced into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which in any case wouldn't drag the government further to the right. Liberals and even Greens undergo some strange conversions when in power, it's true; and Lib Dem councils have a pretty bad track record. But a Lib-Lab coalition government is unlikely, and I very much doubt whether it would be more corporate-friendly, racist and authoritarian than this one.

For me to write this will appal those socialists who still hold the line that "Labour is the party of the organised working class", but I think it's time to replace the word "working" with "capitalist", and try the sentence again. Trade unionists put tremendous effort into the relationship but it's an abusive one. I'm sure union leaders will say, "But Tony's not like that when he's with me", but they're just throwing money at the problem.

Anyway, I'm off now. One of the failings I freely acknowledge is that I haven't given due credit to all the people who've given me information and inspiration for the column. So here are a few: Rosemary Nelson, Inquest, the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, Voices in the Wilderness, the Pat Finucane Centre, Sukhdev Reel, the Monitoring Group, Lambeth NUT, the Crossroads Women's Centre, the Refugee Council, the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, the Close Campsfield Campaign, the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community, Asylum Aid. Thanks also to the rest. And thanks to all the readers who've written to me - well, most of you.