Armando Iannucci, satirist, writer and TV producer

Has politics become too sinister for satire?

Politics feels fictional. It feels unreal or like a drama. I can only speak for myself, but the idea of writing a fictional version feels pointless. A lot of people pick up on this notion that we are in a post-factual, post-truth world, and it’s all about emotions and feelings, and I think someone like Donald Trump typifies this. He’s allowed to just say things, quite enthusiastically, that are blatantly untrue, and which people know are untrue, and yet he kind of gets away with it with a certain section of the population who feel ‘Yeah, but that’s just him isn’t it? He is being entertaining.’ The criteria for truth at the heart of a political message are beginning to crack. And then the Brexit experience was that everyone felt that both campaigns were clearly not telling the truth. So what purports to be reality in politics is very obviously made up.