From The Observer, Sunday 9th March - Stewart Lee The inevitable victory of the Scottish independence campaign and the subsequent collapse of the Labour vote in the sorry remnants of the UK will see the next election won by a coalition of The Ukip and The Conservative party. Then the Bullingdon boys lack of appeal to the common man will eventually leave the country entirely crushed by The Ukips steel-capped Hush Puppy, as a pipe and cardigan version of The Golden Dawn gradually reshapes society in its own image, smothering dissent under an enormous tartan travel rug of hate. But whether one is a supporter of The Ukips position on immigration or not, at least it is easy to grasp. The Ukip dislikes immigration even more than it loves smoking in pubs. But I was born here so Im all right. What concerns me, as a professional creative, is the apparent incoherence of the anti-immigration partys arts policy, as this will have a direct effect on my own quality of life, financial future and access to touring theatre productions should I chose to leave London and live in a region. The closing nights entertainment at The Ukips conference, it transpired last week, took the form of a 45-minute routine by a comedian called Paul Eastwood, who did funny Asian accents, performed a traditional Midlands folk song which turned out to be an impression of a Muslim prayer call, and told three Asian women in the room that they looked a little bit lost. It sounds like any Christmas Day in our family in the 70s. But without having attended The Ukips party we cant be sure if Eastwoods act was an ironic parody of a pre-PC standup, whether the supposedly offensive material was daringly contrasted and contextualised by material from a more liberal and perhaps pro-immigration or anti-white perspective, or whether Eastwood was so beloved by the entire crowd, perhaps full of people of many different cultures, that his interaction with the three Asian ladies had more of the flavour of gentle tickling from a drunk and over-friendly Christmas uncle, than of outright racial provocation. But whats interesting, for anyone considering working as an artist under the forthcoming Ukip government, or reading or seeing anything interesting ever again should The Ukip be elected, is the response of the partys leader, Nigel Farage, whose simple statement on the Eastwood incident swiftly and definitively unraveled decades of anxieties about The Political Correctness Gone Mad: Enough is enough, declared Farage. Let people tell their jokes! If what they say is inappropriate they wont earn a living because they wont get booked again. Pure. Simple. Classic. Its the kind of straight-talking, no-nonsense approach that has already endeared Farage to millions of nuance-resistant voters nationwide. Unfortunately, Farages definitive statement on ethics and taste in art, defining culture purely in terms of its market value, was compromised this week by the contradictory actions of his deputy leader, Paul Nuttalls. Nuttalls has been trying to prevent the gay comedy singing duo Jonny and the Baptists from completing the 17 dates of their current Stop Ukip Tour. The duo have the political edge of 80s alternative comedy but Jonny Donahoe has a pop soul voice to win X Factor. We took my sister-in-law to see them in Edinburgh and she loved it. That said, theyre not stadium sized, and their 17 dates are mainly in 150-seater rooms. The idea that a tour of this size, performed by two men and one guitar, could stop Ukip is surely part of what makes it funny to call it The Stop Ukip Tour. The Ukips own press release on The Stop Ukip Tour is one of those strange press releases that describe the actions of the people responsible for issuing the press release as if they were actual news, with an independent life beyond the press release they have been written about in by themselves. It begins thus: The Arts Council has come under fire for wasting public money on a political satire show due to start touring in the north west. But it hasnt. Because it didnt. It has only come under fire in this press release. The Stop Ukip show itself has received no funding. Six of the 17 venues on the Baptists tour receive no funding. The others perhaps have a contribution to running costs from a local authority, and Arts Council money. When I tour council-funded venues I am often surprised that they host people such as Roy Chubby Brown, Jim Davidson, hosts of dubious mediums, and Jon Gaunty Gaunt, who no doubt offend the sensibilities of arts administrators who learned their craft at polytechnics during the PC era of the 80s and 90s. But council-funded venues have complex briefs to balance populist, profit-making performances with things that tick aspirational arts boxes. Maybe Paul Nuttalls knows this, and deliberately issued one of those misleading statements, like Goves one about teachers using the Mr Men to tell kids about Nazism, hoping it can cause maximum damage before it is discredited. The Ukips press release concludes, its doublespeak undimmed; Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and Ukip is very much the party of free speech but I… have written to the Arts Council about this… distasteful satire. Nuttallss boss, Farage, meanwhile, sees the demand of the market as the only arbiter of taste, and does not believe judgments about the value of a performance can be substantiated above and beyond a simple measurement of its popularity. Trying to shut down theatre productions, like burning books, always looks bad, I think. But saying anything is fine if it sells well seems philistine. To be fair to The Ukip, they are learning on the job, and formulating a coherent arts policy was never high on their agenda, which is concerned mainly with deterring foreigners. Even the Tories struggled to define the purpose and value of culture, with Maria Miller, the culture secretary, initially assessing it in purely commercial terms, even as Michael Gove insisted Middlemarch was inherently better than Twilight, despite the latters vast commercial success in the free market. Given that these two intellectual titans struggled to find a workable definition of the value and purpose of culture, what hope is there for The Ukip? Well, should they need a culture secretary, The Ukip need look no further than the beloved mainstay of British entertainment who announced his intention of joining the party this week – Jethro. And Jethro says, Bullcks to Europe!
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 11:46:46 +0000
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