A friend of mine, Jonathan Gordon-Farleigh, and I sat down well over a decade ago and discussed how satire is missing the point. We surmised back then that it lets the powerful off of the hook because while we laugh at them, they continue on their merry way. Now, in 2026, this has become even more explicit, and we can no longer just sit and laugh. We have to engage proactively to dismantle the platform from which they laugh at us.
Recently I watched the following discussion with Stewart Lee, and he makes almost exactly the same point.
It has long been recognised that satire has always been one of society’s sharpest intellectual tools. At its best, it does far more than make us laugh. It exposes hypocrisy, dismantles propaganda and forces the powerful to confront the absurdity of the systems they build. But over the last two or three decades, it has increasingly been in danger of becoming toothless, distracted by personality and spectacle rather than the ideas and institutions that shape our lives.
This matters because power rarely survives through personality alone. It survives through ideas: ideologies, narratives, and assumptions imposed from above to keep ordinary people compliant, divided, and in their place.
When satire focuses too heavily on the quirks, voices, hairstyles, or mannerisms of public figures, it risks missing the machinery behind them.
The politician becomes the joke.
The policy and its ideology escape scrutiny.
That is where satire begins to weaken and disintegrate.
Historically, the strongest satire has never merely mocked individuals. It has attacked the beliefs and systems they represent. Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal was not simply a joke at the expense of politicians of the day; it was a savage indictment of economic cruelty, class indifference, and colonial attitudes towards the Irish poor. The brilliance lay in how it took an idea, the reduction of human beings to economic units, and pushed it to its grotesque logical conclusion.
That is real satire.
It reveals the horror already present within the ideology itself.
By contrast, much contemporary satire often settles for caricature. A politician’s awkward laugh, an eccentric hairstyle, a clumsy speech, or an embarrassing gaffe becomes the central focus. These things may be funny, but it is extremely rare that they ever become politically transformative.
A government minister is not dangerous because he/she/they sound ridiculous.
They are dangerous because of the ideas he/she/they normalise.
If satire only mocks the surface, it can even strengthen power by reducing serious political questions to entertainment. Scholars examining political satire in modern media note this paradox: satire can become a product of the same culture industry it seeks to criticise, turning dissent into content rather than action.
This is especially true in the age of social media.
Platforms reward immediacy, virality and recognisable personalities. A cutting takedown of a political figure’s face or voice is far easier to clip, meme and circulate than a deeper satire of economic systems, media ownership, or structural inequality. As a result, satire can become trapped in the logic of spectacle.
The individual becomes the symbol.
The system remains invisible.
This mirrors what Guy Debord described as the “society of the spectacle”, in which social relations are mediated by images and appearances. In such a culture, personality becomes a substitute for political substance.
And this is precisely where the powerful are most comfortable.
After all, personalities can be replaced.
Ideas are harder to uproot.
A government can sacrifice one disgraced minister while preserving the same austerity agenda. A media corporation can remove one controversial presenter while continuing to push the same narratives about migrants, workers, or public services.
If satire fixates on individuals, it risks helping this process.
The face changes.
The ideology survives.
True satire should not merely humiliate a person; it should illuminate the assumptions that person is being used to sell.
For example, satirising a billionaire solely for being a greedy, selfish person misses the wider point. The sharper target is the idea that extreme wealth equals wisdom, moral worth, or the right to shape public life. It is the ideology of deference to wealth that deserves ridicule.
Likewise, mocking a right-wing populist purely for mannerisms or bombast can backfire. Their supporters often interpret such attacks as elite sneering, which can deepen loyalty. What must be satirised instead are the contradictions within the ideas: the promise of national renewal through division, the claim to defend “ordinary people” while protecting elite interests, and the rhetoric of freedom used to justify repression.
Satire is strongest when it makes the ideology collapse under its own absurdity.
Research into the psychology of satire suggests that when satire targets people alone, audiences may simply absorb contempt without deeper reflection. But when it targets ideas, it can stimulate critical thinking and political awareness.
That distinction is crucial.
Ridicule alone is not enough.
The aim is revelation.
This is why the best political satire has always “punched up” at systems of power rather than down at personal traits. It interrogates who benefits from certain narratives and whose interests are being served.
Why are the poor blamed for economic failure?
Why are migrants used as scapegoats?
Why are workers told there is “no money” for wages but endless funds for corporate subsidies and war?
These are the ideas that keep people in their place.
Satire should drag them into the light.
In Britain especially, where class structures often survive through coded language and cultural ritual, satire has a vital democratic function. It can puncture the myths that sustain hierarchy: that privilege is merit, that inherited power is competence, and that obedience is patriotism.
The danger comes when satire forgets its purpose and becomes mere personality theatre.
At that point, it ceases to challenge power and instead becomes another arm of the entertainment machine.
Power is rarely frightened by mockery of faces.
It is terrified by mockery of the ideas that justify its existence.
That is where satire must remain.
Not in personalities.
In principles.
Not in the individual mask.
In the ideology behind it.
Because people come and go.
The ideas that keep us in our place endure unless they are exposed, ridiculed, and ultimately dismantled.
Johnny, Stewart, and I welcome everyone who would like to join us.
