BY SEAN WALSH
In an episode of the 1990s comedy series Seinfeld, Jerry’s dentist decides to convert to Judaism “for the jokes”. When Jerry is asked if this offends him “as a Jewish person” he replies “No! It offends me as a comedian”.
Comedy is not something that should be taken lightly. The political class would do well to remember that.
It is a good thing, therefore, that Nigel Farage has forced a by-election in his constituency of Clacton. Ostensibly he has done this to get ahead of the process ambush being prepared for him via some parliamentary investigation which everybody knows is a stitch-up.
The real reason, I hope, is to go up against the leftist comedy Establishment, as represented in this case by Mr Jonathan Harvey, aka “Count Binface”.
Mr Harvey, as you may know, was once caught writing “gag” lines for Ian Hislop and therefore did the honourable thing by putting on a costume and fleeing to another galaxy. Some years later, he returned to Earth on a mission to hijack the cherished tradition of the election “novelty” candidate. He has been taking himself a bit too seriously ever since.
Kemi Badenoch has accused Farage of indulging in a political gimmick. She seems to be implying that this is a bad thing. It isn’t, or at least not necessarily. Jokes, gimmicks, stunts can be useful contributors to the form of life known as “electoral politics”, and useful additions to the practices and language games which comprise it.
If it’s a “gimmick” for Farage to force this election, it’s also a “gimmick” to refuse to run your own candidate in it and to instead invest political capital in the modern equivalent of Dom Joly’s oversized mobile phone – a schtick with a very short comedic half-life.
And that’s the problem the Farage-haters are going to have to deal with very soon: their joke, hilarious by BBC standards, isn’t very funny at all.
There is something the British public understands that lefty comedians do not: that for something to be funny it helps if it causes spontaneous and unforced laughter. The Binface thing has the feel of humour-by-committee or by political algorithm. It reminds me of those Monty Python sketches that the cleverer kids at school pretended to find funny.
The wider public, who, unlike the political and media class, experience the consequences of the decisions of that class, are quite capable of getting a good joke. Being good sports they will also, for a time, and possibly for an easy life, even go along with a bad one.
But not for long, and there are already signs that the inter-party not-Farage-at-any-cost clique is overplaying its hand with the rumoured intervention of eco-zealot Dale Vince, the preternaturally mirthless, semi-sheared multimillionaire Labour donor.
In a move which doesn’t really scream “ours is the anti-Establishment choice” Vince has reportedly offered to subsidise Mr Harvey’s campaign. If the media were interested in following the money, which they are not, then that would be a detail that might pique their interest, if only so that they could pretend to be even-handed about these things.
Has Farage been maladroit in his execution of this gimmick? The consensus is that he has, so probably not. Farage is a master political alchemist, with a proven record of turning unpromising situations into electoral gold.
So, all might yet come right. His primary asset in Clacton is that the voters there are normal people who don’t actually care that a friend gave him five million quid. That, after all, is what you expect friends who can afford to drop five million quid to do.
Nor I suspect are they all that bothered that the Reform leader is friendly with crooks, since they tend to be quite interesting people. And difficult to avoid, given that this government has released more villains than Heath Ledger’s Joker.
But they might be bothered by Farage’s persecution-by-process. And they might have spotted that even though it is true that parliamentary rules apply to all MPs, it is false that they are in practice applied to all MPs – contemporary being a bit Animal Farm in that respect as in so many others.
This, then could be Farage’s natural pivot. To make this not about Farage versus the Establishment, but fairness versus process.
But who knows? We live in strange and funny times. Andy Burnham is about to enter Downing Street having courted Makerfield with a promise to leave her for his more attractive mistress as soon as the marriage is consummated. And Starmer is about to leave that address because he is the leader of a party which won an election.
There’s another episode of Seinfeld in which Jerry talks about living in “bizarro world”. I guess we’re there. Let’s hope Farage’s “gimmick” works out. If not for politics, then at least for comedy.