Steve Richards: Political leaders are more pitiful than powerful

As the storm of derision over George Osborne’s posh hamburger suggested, political leaders are nowhere near as powerful as they seem to be.

In the gap between perception and reality there is much comic material, and pathos too, as they struggle to appear in control when often they are not. Yet fashionable satire ignores the gap and focuses on the perception alone, fuelling the orthodoxy that mighty leaders are bastards — corrupt, useless and above all so powerful they need to be knocked down to size. Ho, ho, ho.

Orthodox satire does not and cannot work as it used to do. The balance has changed. The comedians are often more influential, wealthy, adored and famous than the largely unknown yet still-loathed politicians they mock. So I have become the first political columnist to perform a one-man show, taking to the stage for five nights in London before heading for the Edinburgh Festival. I am joined, sort of, by the likes of Cameron, Osborne, Miliband, Blair, Brown and others.

The recent focus on the eating habits of senior Conservatives shows where the comedy can work and where it can misfire. When Osborne was asked at length about the posh burger, he noted that politicians are only ever seen in TV studios, the Commons and offices and are thus not regarded as human. He tweeted a photo of himself eating a burger in an attempt to humanise himself — a reasonable enough objective.

So the comics mocked posh Osborne and his Byron burger. Ho, ho, ho, once more. But on this I have sympathy with the Chancellor. Perhaps he should have been more disingenuous and bought a Big Mac, although then he would have been asked how often he ate one of those, while someone from Byron would have intervened to say the Chancellor normally went there. That is what happened to Cameron when he declared last year that he had enjoyed a Cornish pasty at Leeds station. A spokesman for the station pointed out that the eaterie had closed, deepening the pasty crisis in No 10.

Eating a pasty came to symbolise being in touch and not being too posh. Cameron and Osborne equivocated wildly, getting into more trouble and yet the equivocation was unavoidable.

A senior figure who attends the regular gatherings of G8 leaders tells me that he reads descriptions of the “world’s most powerful men and women” and laughs. In virtually every case they are weak and insecure, fearing election defeat or an internal coup, terrified of their impotence in the face of global crises while needing to appear in command and yet human at the same time.

Voters want to see evidence of human characteristics — yet they turn against leaders who do not appear to be fully in control, even if as human beings leading unruly parties in the midst of economic crisis such authority is impossible.

There is more humour in politicians’ genuine fragility. It is because they are human and often powerless that makes for compelling theatre, not because they are crazed sub-humans with too much power.

Steve Richards’s one-man show, Rock ’n’ Roll Politics, is at the Soho Theatre for five nights from tonight until Saturday. Tickets: 020 7478 0100 or sohotheatre.com.