The importance of humour in opposing Johnson & Rees Mogg
On Friday a list of instructions from the new Leader of the Commons Jacob Rees Mogg to his staff on the rules of grammar and language usage he expected them to observe was leaked.
The document was apparently not new but something Mogg had used in his Constituency Office. We don’t know the motivation of the leaker but as senior officers from the FDA and Prospect, unions representing civil servants, tweeted it was a serious matter.
The fact that a Minister can have the pomposity and arrogance to produce such a document is concerning. Civil Servants are professionals who do not need a Minister to tell them how to write.
Further there is a political element to it. There is no question that in order to distract from the hard right agenda of the Johnson Cabinet there is an effort to portray him and indeed Rees Mogg as in someway less than serious. In reality they are very serious indeed.
Solomon Hughes the investigative journalist has summed this up well:
We need to avoid getting to drawn into conversation about the colour of his wig or size of his big red shoes, and keep focusing on how Labour can change conditions for the audience in the big tent
A link to the full article is here:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/boris-not-just-sneering-snob
And yet that is not all there is to be said.
Shortly after Rees Mogg’s rules were leaked the author and broadcaster Michael Rosen and myself began a twitter exchange to ridicule them.
This was not an exchange resulting from an earlier planning meeting. It was entirely of the moment. Rosen tweeted, I responded. For that reason I’m not copying it here but you can find it in our twitter timelines @michaelrosenyes @kmflett
The exchanges attempted, successfully or not, that is for others to judge, to take the rise out of Rees Mogg’s pomposity and arrogance. It wasn’t in any way to underestimate how vicious his agenda is. It was designed to undermine its impact by the use of humour.
Too often in my lengthy experience the left lacks humour. Private Eye’s long running Dave Spart caricature would not work at all if that was not the case. Making people laugh can of course reinforce the status quo, that is Johnson’s idea. It can also challenge it.
Leave a Reply