There's been an interesting spat on Twitter recently between Alistair Campbell and Armando Iannucci. It started because Iannucci has an accepted an OBE from the Queen's honours list, and Campbell thinks he should have refused it. The exchange went as follows:
Now, I don't think Campbell really cares about the honours and whether Iannucci should have accepted it or not; I think he's seen an opportunity to attack someone who he feels has made a career out of attacking him. Campbell's very public and disastrous attack on the BBC around the time of the Iraq war still probably obsesses him slightly. He was a man who was used to winning the media battles up to that point, and losing that one cost him not so much his job, but definitely his reputation as an expert manipulator. The BBC won out, and Iannucci is very BBC, who started out as a producer there and has worked for them in one way or another throughout most of his career (apart from his very underrated sketch shows for Channel 4).
Many people (probably including Campbell) assumed that Malcolm Tucker was plain and simple a caricature of Campbell, but on closer inspection this is simplistic. It is a natural assumption because Campbell was at the height of his powers when the programme first came out, but it's not an out-and-out portrayal of Campbell himself, more an attack on the culture of the New Labour government of the time, which was starting to let itself determine policy by reacting to the media. It was this culture that has led to Leveson, with Prime Ministers courting Editors, rather than the other way round. Tucker is an metaphor rather than a character in the show, a force rather than a person, who enters a room like a tornado. But as well as the agression of Campbell there is a lot of Charlie Whelan in there (most of the creative swearing is probably inspired more by Whelan's colourful way with words than Campbell, as evidenced by the use of one of Whelan's favourite expressions, "a package of bollocks"). And when Campbell turns on the charm, there's definately some of Peter Mandelson's sociopathic felinity.
Campbell though (perhaps understandably) took the character as a personal attack, and went on record as saying there was "nothing funny about the show whatsoever" - an attempt at indifference that was as good as an admission that it had hit a nerve. (Amusingly, at one award ceremony, Campbell was sat next to the actor who plays Tucker, Peter Capaldi.)
Taking all the personalities aside though, the question Campbell is asking is "is it possible for a satirist to retain his credibility after being decorated so highly by the Establishment with a big E?" And it is a valid question, though one that I think can be answered with a 'yes'.
I think the answer really lies in what you define satire as. A lot of people understand satire to basically mean 'political comedy', which it does incorporate but is too narrow a description. Because satire has a much broader brief than that; a satirist concentrates on puncturing the worst elements of human character which can involve politics because a lot of the worst characteristics of human beings tend to be illustrated in the political world. Ben Jonson, the first English satirist relevant to how we perceive satire today, wrote plays such as The Alchemist and Volpone, where a succession of characters are 'gulled' into parting money by con-artists. Both of these plays have characters that are broad caricatures of vices rather than believable characters. The names in Volpone all correspond unflatteringly with animals for instance (Volpone means 'Sly Fox', and his servant Mosca's name comes from 'Mosquito' (ie, a blood-sucker).
But Jonson spent a great deal of his career (the majority, in fact) constructing elaborate 'Masques' for the King, frothy court romances for the Aristocrats to enjoy. That does not somehow render his satires invalid; and it certainly makes Iannucci accepting a medal from the Queen look small. Similarly, Swift and Pope were perfectly happy to chill with the Aristos. And zipping forward to the 20th Century and the so-called 'Satire Boom' of the 1960s, one could hardly describe people like Peter Cook as being outside the Establishment; easily the most important comedian of his generation he was destined for the Foreign Office before Beyond The Fringe. This was never relevant to his comedy, which relied more on making fun of peoples' foibles regardless of class or background. His impressions of Harold MacMillian (how he confessed to having an affection for) sat next to the Pete and Dud caricatures of seedy men in pubs who think they know everything. He performed in front of the Queen more than once, at the same time as being the owner of Private Eye. This is not somehow a contradiction in terms.
Iannucci has never stated any objection to the honours system as far as I can find out, and so I can't see why his accepting one is somehow hypocritical. His work up to and including The Thick Of It his criticised the corruption and vanity within politics, but he has never claimed to want to start a revolution. I don't think Armando Iannucci OBE will make significantly different programmes to Armando Iannucci, and he will undoubtedly continue to make a more important and more constructive influence on British culture than Alistair Campbell ever will.
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