Who’s in charge around here?

The Fat Controller

Who is in charge, leaders or led?

When a comedian has a live audience rolling in those metaphorical isles, the cliché says he has them in the palm of his hand, but who is really controlling whom? The audience demands laughter, so the comedian must provide. Who started it all?

Chicken and egg come to mind.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the comedian’s lot is not necessarily a happy one either. Expectations are high, the slightest slip drooled over in pitiless detail. Fancy a drop to keep the gremlins at bay old chap? There’s an audience for that too.

So maybe we should see politics as bidirectional rather than unidirectional. Of course we do that anyway – the audience rolls around laughing and the comedian responds with another perfectly timed gag. The thing is bidirectional. We know it well, but do we apply it?

Have you heard the one about ending up with the government we deserve?

Another tired old joke? Maybe, but we elected the expense fiddlers, house-swapper, liars and serial trouser-droppers. We elected all of them.

All those useless, venal, bungling MPs most of whom only want to hand the whole sorry mess to EU bureaucrats so they can get on with the serious business of swindling and shagging. We elected them and shall do so again.

So it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dave, Nick and assorted Eds are dishonest because we made them dishonest, furtive because we made them furtive, thick because we go along with thick, there because we put them there.

Nobody is in charge. Instead we have a complex self-referential process with no starting point, no primary cause, no primary responsibility and no solutions.

We applaud our politicians simply by putting them where they are, applaud their dishonesty by doing nothing about it, applaud their lies until we bring the House down.