ABSTRACT
This chapter charts how in the years after the EU Referendum, Brexit becomes an embedded part of popular culture in the UK and a lens through which to interpret contemporary British society. The first section of the chapter puts political satire in context and surveys literature on the impact of political satire on public opinion. Second, the chapter records the ways in which victory and loss are satirised in contemporary comedy, with humour proposed as a mode of ridicule and as a coping strategy. Third, the chapter surveys the landscape of contemporary British comedy and gives specific examples of how Brexit has embedded in the world of the funny, frequently in ways that do not foreground Brexit but which allude to it. This suggests that Brexit starts to perform ideological labour in comedy as a cultural signifier. Fourth, the chapter charts comedy and satire from the period after ‘Brexit Day’, or 31st January 2020, which was the day the UK officially left the EU and moved into a one-year transition period. Finally, the chapter ends with the erasure of Brexit in both news coverage and comedy as the Covid-19 pandemic emerges in the winter of 2020.
