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August 21, 2024 - 1:00pm
Next month there is to be an exhibition of the works of Led By Donkeys, the politically-inspired japesters who have delighted us all over the last five years by putting up a few big billboards. Or in the words of the plug for the accompanying coffee table book, using one of the most tedious phrases of our time, “hold(ing) the powerful to account”. The exhibition is to take place at 17 Midland Road in Bristol — a “multi-purpose space”, apparently — and will feature big photos of the big billboards in situ, often with people walking obliviously by.
Led by Donkeys has given us half a decade of outrageous guerrilla larks, with that exclusive, bespoke, boutique brand of humour that already fills every single platform and outlet, pours from every single modern media device, marches in lockstep with governments and corporates, but which still — incredibly — considers itself anti-establishment. The group’s work offers only an irreverent take on the week’s news, a sideways look at the headlines: nothing original or insightful, just boilerplate conformism when it comes to issues such as Net Zero and immigration.
Of course, humour is famously subjective. But where Charlie Brooker and Marina Hyde have a marvellous turn of phrase and real flair, Led By Donkeys possesses a total lack of distinctiveness or originality. Even Banksy has more wit and capacity for thought-provoking material. Led By Donkeys’ stunts, though impressive on a technical level, are so dreary, projecting Tory MPs’ inane tweets onto billboards or an EU flag onto the white cliffs of Dover. It has the rictus grin of approved, partisan regime output. There is something akin to North Korean kids’ TV about it.
The group’s very name screams of the naff Sixties ahistorical remembrance of the First World War, and its lazy calumny on the officer class of that conflict. We must always remember that there is no hatred in this country so vicious and so deeply felt as the hatred that the upper middle class feels for the actual upper class, that the minor public schoolboy feels for the major public schoolboy. It is a boiling envy for inherited wealth dressed up as social concern for the lower orders and in the modern world, where power resides in a completely different place, this is plainly ludicrous.
When Led By Donkeys revealed their identities to the world in 2019, they looked absolutely exactly as you’d expect. That is: four chapfallen hipster blokes in their late 30s with interesting facial hair and bottom-feeding public-sector jobs called James, Ben, Will and Ollie, who felt they really had to do something about bloody Brexit.
Now that those dreadful Tories have finally been deprived of the power they so devastatingly wielded — enforcing extreme Right-wing policies such as admitting millions of immigrants and committing economic suicide — LBD has been left in a bit of a satirical quandary. The other week, it performed an excruciatingly weak stunt — using somebody else’s ancient joke — on, of all people, Liz Truss. Why stop there? Let’s really sock it to Bonar Law, lads. And there’s no doubt plenty of comedic mileage in the repeal of the Corn Laws.
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SubscribeThe collapse of the traditional Tory Enemy has quickly punctured this sort of satire. They are foundering, directionless. Banksy, Stewart Lee and even Marina Hyde now seem deflated and without Mojo, as quaint as sketches in Punch from the 1880s.
One awaits with bated breath for their first barb against a Labour government, but will it be a long wait?
In the US, we just say “the left can’t meme.”
Led By Donkeys once had a football billboard which said ‘Real fans don’t boo their team’
Just how out of touch can you get?
Middle-class people can hardly be expected to “get” football, any more than they can be expected to “get” traditional British food or hard, physical labour.
These here-today gone-tomorrow bunch of bores are “lionised” (appropriately enough) by the very establishment they purport to critique; and all of this in the name of their pathetic version of “comedy”, and even “art”. They are, after all, putting on an exhibition, and i wouldn’t be surprised if there’s Arts Council funding (i.e. taxpayer’s money) involved. It’s no wonder so many people are dismissive of the Arts establishment, given the yawn-inducing all-must-be-creatives trope they seek to administer by, in such a condescending way.
There’s inevitably going to be taxpayer money in the mix somewhere. What else are otherwise unemployable middle class arts graduates going to do but live off the state now that we have the Internet and AI and don’t need middle managers anymore. They can’t all be NHS diversity commissars.
Or can they?
The funniest thing about Led By Donkeys is that they haven’t realised that they are themselves among the most mediocre of the donkeys by which we are led. Like Nish Kumar, Stewart Lee etc etc etc.
I am thinking of starting a counter-establishment grouping called;
“Misled by Morons”
We will launch with a series of excoriating billboard adverts featuring, amongst others, the picture of our dear leader and his foul-mouthed side-kick on their knees in labour HQ with the caption: “Riots, violence, dozens of deaths and over a billion dollars worth of damage? We’ll get down on our knees for that!”.
Next we’ll have a picture of a shoe with a broken lace and the legend: “My shoe lace broke today. Some idiots would blame Donald Trump, but I know it was really Climate Change.”
To be supported with a series of bumper stickers “Report my driving? F*ck off, I’m a muslim”, and “At least in Russia the police treat everyone like Sh*t” and “Ban Aspirin Now! It’s white and works ….”
It’ll run and run . . .
Another example of why far right loons should never try to be funny.
You guys just don’t get it. Leave the witty remarks to me.
And you, my fizzy little friend, are the *perfect* example of why left-wing loons are never funny, no matter how hard they try. Chin, chin!
Cin cin, dimwit!
Another example of why you should never try to appear sophisticated, my little chum! LOL!
(how long until he edits his post?!?!)
Cin cin is the Italian phrase, where “c” is pronounced like the “ch” sound, as in the word “chump,” whenever it is followed by “e” or “i.”
In English it’s chin chin. Originally derived from the Madarin ‘qing qing’ meaning ‘please please’.
Are you Italian? Or just another product of Blair’s ‘Educayshun, educayshun, educayshun . . .”? Do try and keep up.
Ciao!
Not clever – ignorant! (Our friend Prosecco Marxist that is)
Imagine having to make up that nonsense to try to avoid looking stupid – yet you just end up looking even more ridiculous! Wonderful!
Keep digging, sport – this is hilarious!
I think cin cin is crap wine drunk by woke morons in London.
Sort of Blue Nun for generation Z.
Most likely favoured by Champers Socialist.
Lefty trolls can’t afford real Champagne.
Not sophisticated – pretentious (you that is)!
Still waiting.
What are you waiting for, cherie?
It beats me, CS, why you sully yourself by even engaging with “far right loons”. Is it so that you can convince yourself how much better and cleverer you are than them? And funnier too, naturally. Though I fear you’re mainly funny by accident.
CS The attention seeking Incel is back.
Not witty – laughable!
Witty?
Not really.
Shitty?
Definitely.
Hahahaha! Leftist humour, now that’s funny since you’re devoid of any joy unless it’s the Kamala kackling manufactured type. Otherwise you’re a miserable lot, it’s why you’re always whining about “victim hood”.
The smug self-satisfied air of 3 Lineker’s floating on their own fumes.
Apparat-chic…how exciting.
“We must always remember that there is no hatred in this country so vicious and so deeply felt as the hatred that the upper middle class feels for the actual upper class, ”
But Alan Clark’s dad was a Lord, the Lord Clark of “Civilisation.” He grew up in a castle (in the school holidays, anyway).
True, but I think his general point holds. Upper-middle-class (and especially lawyerly) hatred of the aristocracy was also, incidentally, a critical catalyst of the French Revolution, and thus a harbinger of the modern world. We used to be led by toffs. We’re now led by effete, Guardian-reading onanists.
Always good stuff from Gareth Roberts, who knows where to find the actual enemies of the working class.
lions led by donkeys is how the German troops talked about the British troops (lions) led by donkeys (their officers)
You don’t say! I don’t expect anyone here would have have known that.
Did German troops say that? Or was it invented by Alan Clark as something he thought they might have said?
Do you have a primary source before Alan Clark?
According to Wikipedia it goes back to Plutarch:
I do like to read a skillful critical flaying – so rare these days.
Unfortunately such “satire” is simply sustained by comedy echo chambers. Instead of being truly thoughtful, it is little more than a collective mass confirmation bias of familiar prejudices.
A UK Labour government is going to provide plenty of material. David Lammy is an easy target.
Excellent writing, far funnier than anything Led By Donkeys ever produced.