What else could today’s comedy double be? A bit late today, but here’s my magnum opus, a roundup of satirical Tony Blair video clips. Let’s start, as seems only logical, with the early years…
This first is not so much comedy as scandal, but when it’s about Blair getting gay blowjobs, smoking dope and glam-rock it’s good enough for me. From Tony Blair, Rock Star:
What a wanker he was even then. I have to say he seemed like just the sort of posh ‘hippy’ I and my suburban casual friends would’ve wanted to beat up. How he managed not to get laughed out of the Labour party is beyond me but the party was in such internal turmoil then that he just oiled through the ctacks and before you knew it, voila. there he was, party leader. Clause IV was gone and populist socialism was dead.
This next is from 1999; the new Labour party leadership were still seen as well-meaning bumblers rather than the lying, corrupt, greedy authoritarians they were to become. It’s Reeves and Mortimer and the Labour Party Band:
The spiffy Dom Joly lookalike at the beginning of the clip, who appears to have uploaded this and appears also to be quite nifty with brand theory, a videocam and an editing suite, is York councillor and thrusting young New Labour type James Alexander. Who knows, maybe his clever marketing ploy will catch the eye of Gordon, who, as we know, is all about the technology. They never change, these Labour political wannabes, do they? All front. But who knows, maybe Gordon might also notice that young James seems to have put New Labour’s logo on what just might not be its intellectual property to claim. Hmm, didn’t they steal some other online intellectual property before? How very New Labour.
Personally I find it safer to assume that anything found on YouTube has permission – it’s YouTube’s responsiibility, it’s their site. But there are always exceptions and I doubt permissiion to upload means permission to slap the Labour Party logo all over it.
But we’be known for a while how sleazy New Labour and the Blairs were. Here’s eminent QC Cherie Blair done by Dead Ringers:
That minor illegality brings us to the big one – the conspiracy, using the excuse of 9/11, to illegally invade and occupy Iraq. Anti-Bush and Blair satire, or so we thought then, was at it’s zenith. Blair and Bush seemed so close, so sympatico as to be thought lovers . This spawned many an innuendo-laden video mashup, but this is the best. Bush and Blair do Gay Bar:
Blair may have faced many challenges as PM but this may be one of the oddest. Blair faces Paxman, goes blank and gets testy in this Newsnight/ University Challenge hybrid:
Post-2003, and Iraq’s been bombarded with shock, awe and chemical weapons, thousands are dead and the missiom has been declared accomplished. At Westminster relatioins with former BFF Gordon had reached an all time low, according to Armando Iannucci in ‘2004- the Stupid Version‘:
3 years later they’re still bickering like jilted lovers and Iraq is a fucking disaster as a consequence of Blair’s endless lies. Meanwhile the War On Turr rolls on, Blair is still singing an American tune and still a rockstar wannabe, still trying to milk the last drop of applause out of an unwilling audience.
2007, and at this point the nation is so sick of Blair and his crew of mendacious incompetents and war criminals that even such momentous scandals as Cash for Honours and the Downing St memo couldn’t do much more to tarnish them in our eyes. Just go already, we thought. Brown seemed reluctant to put the knife in:
But now, finally, at last, the bugger’s going. But he’s still aping the wannabe rock star, on his last, final, farewell tour ever, playing to ever dwindling audiences.Bremner Bird & Fortune:
And the public still want him hanged. Don’t Watch That, Watch This:
But for Tony it’s all about the legacy, and besides he may not actually be going at all. He is after all a Time Lord, as he tells Nick Robinson on Dead Ringers. A hundred more years, shudder:
Goodbye, Mr Tony Blair, we’ll miss you, in the same way we’d miss suppurating syphilis chancres or steatorrhea.
Hello, Gordon Brown, who isn’t half such good satire-fodder, but boy, does he make a good Dalek:
Mind you, it’s not a done deal yet: Should the unthinkable happen and a general election be called, we might get to start all over again with another posh touch-feely wanker.
More Armando Ianucci, this time from Time Trumpet
Oh, joy.
