(Note: this is one instalment of a multi-part essay.)
In 2003, Have I Got News For You was leaving its peak era. It had just lost its host, Angus Deayton, but the BBC and production company Hat Trick were confident it could thrive without him. The show now began its bizarre second era. This saw an immediate drop in viewing numbers but then a stable plateau which has mostly persisted to the present day. But, over that 20 year period, the show has become ever less “relevant”. It is now a shadow of its 1990s self, with no vitality, labouring under a great weight of hypocrisy, complacency and dishonesty. In this section we will examine how that came to be.
After 2003, the world changed. Ideas which had been the darling children of the New Left now became absolutely enshrined, and enacted...