Brexit Satire

Brexit Satire: The Joke That Keeps Giving

Brexit is the gift that British satire did not ask for, could not have invented, and has been unable to put down for a decade. The decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union following a 2016 referendum provided British satirists with material of such abundance, variety, and self-renewing quality that several have expressed something approaching exhaustion alongside their gratitude. The joke has not stopped. The implications have not been resolved. The satire continues.

The Referendum and the Comedy of Catastrophic Sincerity

The 2016 referendum campaign produced some of the most memorable political statements in British history, several of which were false, one of which was painted on the side of a bus, and most of which have provided the raw material for satirical commentary ever since. The £350 million for the NHS bus, the sovereignty argument, the warnings about Turkish membership, the Project Fear counter-narrative: all of these were sincere political positions held and expressed by sincere political actors, and all of them became, in varying degrees, satirical objects within months of the vote. Full Fact’s Brexit fact-checking archive is the most comprehensive resource for the specific claims made during the campaign.

The Bus

The Brexit bus – the red bus carrying the claim that the UK sent £350 million per week to the EU and that this money could be spent on the NHS instead – is the most successful single image in the history of British political satire, with the significant qualification that it was produced by the people it now satirises. The claim was false in ways that had been clearly explained before the referendum, which did not prevent it from appearing on the bus, which did not prevent it from being effective, which is itself a satirical observation about the relationship between accuracy and political persuasion in the modern era. The UK Statistics Authority wrote formally to the campaign about the figure.

The Negotiations: A Comedy in Several Acts

The process of negotiating the UK’s exit from the EU, which took from 2016 to 2020 and involved three Prime Ministers, four Secretaries of State for Exiting the European Union, and an indeterminate number of meaningful votes, provided British satire with an extended comic structure of unusual richness. The pattern – a position announced with confidence, followed by its modification, followed by its abandonment, followed by a position announced with confidence – repeated itself with such regularity that it became a formal satirical device. Have I Got News for You, Private Eye, and The Thick of It’s writers (consulted on a 2017 Brexit special) all noted that the material was arriving faster than it could be processed. The Guardian’s Brexit archive is the most comprehensive record of the period.

Remainers, Leavers and the Comedy of Mutual Incomprehension

Brexit produced a satirical challenge that most political subjects do not: a divided audience. Comedy that mocked the referendum result was enthusiastically received by one half of the population and resented by the other. Comedy that defended the result had the opposite reception. The satirists who navigated this most effectively were those who mocked the process rather than the outcome – the incompetence of the negotiations, the gap between what was promised and what was delivered, the institutional failure on multiple sides – because process comedy has a broader potential audience than outcome comedy. The process, it should be noted, provided unlimited material from every direction.

Where We Are Now

Brexit satire has entered a new phase: the phase of consequences. The gap between what was promised and what has been delivered – on trade, on fishing, on the Irish border, on the sovereignty that was supposed to be reclaimed – is now measurable rather than speculative, which gives satirists a different kind of material to work with. The comparison between promise and reality is one of satire’s oldest and most reliable structures, and Brexit has provided it in more detail than almost any political decision in recent British history. The joke is not over. The punchline is still arriving.