Have conservatives lost the ability to laugh at themselves?

Ryan Coogan, The Independent

Look, I get it – nobody likes to be embarrassed. I still sometimes wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thinking about the time I sang a song to my whole class during an English presentation. No, the song was not relevant to the presentation. Yes, I did write the song myself. So just understand that’s where I’m coming from when I say: I do have a little bit of sympathy for Liz Truss, who recent found herself the victim of a prank during an event to promote her book Ten Years To Save The West. In the middle of the former PM’s talk, where she expressed her support for Donald Trump and made similarly unhinged Trussisms, a banner unfurled above her head which read “I crashed the economy”, accompanied by a picture of a lettuce with googly eyes. Protest group Led By Donkeys later claimed responsibility for the prank.

When faced with a moment of ignobility like that, it’s important that you respond with grace, humility, and a healthy sense of self-deprecation — and in true Truss fashion, she completely beefed it. Responding to the prank on social media on Wednesday, Truss said: “What happened last night was not funny. Far-left activists disrupted the event, which then had to be stopped for security reasons.”

First of all, “far-left activists”? Led By Donkeys is a collective of middle-class centrist dads whose gimmick is “making fun of the safest targets imaginable”. If they’re far left, then I don’t know what that makes me. Presumably some manner of Soviet super soldier.

Tim Montgomerie, formerly an adviser to Boris Johnson, was right to warn that Truss “would be well advised to learn to laugh at herself”. In many ways her reaction to the stunt really hits on a broader problem conservatives all around the world are having at the moment – they’re completely devoid of any humour, and people are starting to notice. It’s fitting that Truss was talking about Trump right before the banner unfurled, saying that she hopes he wins and pledging her support, because the former president is kind of the patient zero for this “conservatives aren’t funny anymore” phenomenon we’re experiencing — which is sort of fitting, considering he was the person who introduced a sense of humour to the political right in the first place.

Trump’s first campaign was characterised by a kind of levity that we hadn’t really seen in right-wing politics up to that point. Well, maybe levity isn’t the right word — more of a gleeful, spiteful, bullying mockery. But people were laughing, and that’s all that mattered.

Sure, politicians on both sides of the aisle have always been quick with the jokes — Trump’s opponent Hilary Clinton appeared on Saturday Night Live during the same campaign to poke fun at herself — but what Trump was doing was different. It wasn’t as retrained, or calculated, or polite, or sanitised, or any of the other words you can use to describe the carefully crafted one-liners a politician’s scriptwriter usually comes up with for them. It was more grassroots, built on memes and in-jokes that allowed his supporters to quickly carve out a community for themselves. Trump effectively positioned himself as a tonic to the “liberal establishment” of scolds and social justice warriors — typified by Hilary Clinton, with her rehearsed soundbites and after-school-special attitude – carving out a place for himself as the “fun” candidate. Sure, it wasn’t as fun if you were, say, Mexican or Muslim, but for his supporters he was a respite from a world that was constantly telling them to stop using certain words, or having certain views, or not liking certain people. With Trump, you could be yourself. He was going to make it legal to laugh again.

Now, was that perception accurate? It doesn’t really matter — any time a liberal or leftist clicked their tongue at a problematic comment, you could look to Trump, who would have a fun new nickname or impression for you to enjoy. And it wasn’t just a US phenomenon – we experienced something similar over here in the UK in Boris Johnson, whose birthday party clown demeanour got him over where his political competency failed him (for a while, at least).