Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election with a campaign video set to Oasis’s “Some Might Say”; Burberry’s “Cool Britannia” campaign for 2026 features actor Stephen Graham pacing a football pitch with Bloc Party’s “Banquet” blaring in the background; there are rumors Ed Balls might be granted a peerage and re-enter the cabinet. Amid this stream of New Labour-era throwbacks, it’s fitting that another turn-of-the-century relic should now land: a new Ali G film, Ali G: Who Iz I?, is reportedly set to land in October this year.

Judging by the announcement video, the revival of Ali G looks set to follow a similar format to the character’s 2000 debut series, Da Ali G Show. In the series, Baron Cohen’s Garage-Jungle-Street-inspired persona would hoodwink influential figures into prank interviews where he would publicly humiliate them with baffling questions. Early victims ranged from Donald Trump to Noam Chomsky, who became visibly aggravated by such questions from Ali G as “How many words does you know?” According to Baron Cohen, the character is based on DJ and radio presenter Tim Westwood, who, as with Ali G’s native Staines, enjoyed an unfashionably leafy upbringing between Suffolk and Norwich.

The return of the character, still donning the original shell suit and skull cap, may have pleased some, like Spelthorne MP Lincoln Jopp, who praised the return and labeled Baron Cohen a “genius”. But even in its 2000s heyday, it was unclear who Ali G was meant to parody, or what exactly the point of the character ever was. Today, its purpose is even less evident.

Based on what we know of Who Iz I? so far — including film crews spotted in the Cotswolds, that it’s been promoted with a stunt at Wimbledon where Ali G heckled Prince William over a supposed drug debt owed by his brother — it looks like the posh-bashing will continue. It is the reflex of a satirist desperate to “punch up”, but one who, being privately educated with a mansion in LA, struggles to find anyone further “up” than himself.

If the original Ali G show was ever meant to ruffle the feathers of Britain’s elite, it did a poor job. As Tony Benn hinted at in his retelling of an early encounter with Ali G, the Blair cartel — who themselves were occasionally accused of putting on a more “rough” accent than was really their own — should have been natural targets. But the blow never really landed. The last two series of Da Ali G Show take place entirely in America. Back home, the invasion of Iraq was well underway, and yet we never saw Ali G target Blair. Instead, he goes after evangelicals and neoconservatives. More recently, Baron Cohen turned to Trump-voting conspiracy theorists and gun activists.

The comedian has only ever taken aim at groups that an audience of Labour-Lib Dem voters deem acceptable to sneer at. The one exception is his poorly received 2016 spy-thriller Grimsby — playing a loutish, lager-swilling Yorkshireman called “Nobby”— which taught Baron Cohen an important lesson. The readers of the Observer will let you make fun of poor people if they are Right-wing or American — preferably both. Northerners are off limits because that’s “punching down”.

Ali G might have made sense back in the 2000s, when there were still people who looked like him swaggering down Hounslow High Street, when the hip-hop group So Solid Crew and Tim Westwood were still current. But So Solid Crew last broke the Top 40 in 2003, and Tim Westwood has been charged with four counts of rape. In the absence of anyone Ali G might be described as a “parody” of, there is nothing left for him to do but serve as a soapbox for preening, moralistic attacks against the British middle class’s stock panto villains: Trump, the concept of “misinformation”, and posh people in general.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t guarantee he’ll be poorly received. If the present media and political class can seem to broadly agree that Count Binface is side-splittingly hilarious, they may well be convinced that a 2026 revival of Ali G is somehow timely. Britain will suffer for it.