Satire?

Private Eye have always satirised the Prime Minister of the day. I have been reading Private Eye since the late 1970s and so remember "Dear Bill" (the letters allegedly written by Dennis Thatcher to Bill Deedes, "The Secret Diary of John Major (aged 47¾)" (the alleged diary of John Major) and "St. Albion Parish News" (the parish newspaper writings of Tony Blair and his team). All very funny but surpassed in terms of believability by "Prime Ministerial Decree" - a weekly "alleged" mock Stalinist decree by the "supreme leader" (Gordon Brown). The dictator hails the "Age of Change" and often attempts to revise history, making harsh attacks on the "discredited regime" of "former Comrade Blair". The current issue's entry is spectacular "Let us remember the immortal words of wisdom enshrined in the Little Brown Book: “When is a Constitution not a Constitution? It is when the Supreme Leader has decreed it to be so, in accordance with the wishes of the People which only he can know... Since I have now been chosen unanimously to express the will of the entire British people, such exercises in pseudo-democratic populism are mere futile charades unworthy of the age of change."

Satire works best when it is believable and this is oh so believable. This issue includes the denunciation of the "Blairite Running Dog Gang of Four" ("the hated, corpulent aristocrat, the self-styled 'Lord Falconer', "the snivelling lickspittle Byers", the "one-time Trotskyite renegade Milburn" and the "obese former Party functionary Clarke". This is a required read.