Labour Party Political Broadcast (partially lost Spitting Image-produced political broadcast; 1996)

A screenshot of Spitting Image puppets of then-Prime Minister John Major and Home Secretary Michael Howard. Taken from the thumbnail of the taken down Youtube video.

Status: Unknown

Comment: Was once available on YouTube, but taken down by ITV.

This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its lack of content.

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On the 10th of October 1996, the Labour Party (UK) aired a near 5-minute political broadcast featuring puppets from the satirical sketch show Spitting Image, 8 months after the show's cancellation following low ratings.

The broadcast was uploaded onto YouTube on 11th December 2016 by a user named David Boothroyd before being taken down around 2020 by ITV. Since then, no uploads of the broadcast have surfaced online.

Synopsis

The broadcast begins with a puppet of the then-Conservative Prime Minister John Major in bed, struggling with his speech script for the "big day" with his wife Norma Major shifting and then-Chief Mouser (Downing Street cat) Humphrey. While thinking about topics to cover in his speech, he realises that he has tarnished his reputation with all the lying he's done in the past years. He also repeats lines stating the promises made by his real life counterpart to emphasise their genuinity.

The broadcast then uses five different historical-themed disaster scenarios to summarise the state of the United Kingdom, with Humphrey, representing the British electorate and is doubtful about Major's claims, appearing in each one:

• Representing the housing crisis, Major, as the mad emperor Nero, fiddles around while his own city of Rome burns around him, with Humphrey's tail on fire.
• The poor state of the economy is represented by the sinking of the Titanic.
• The mass executions by guillotine during the French revolution represent the growing crime rates, with Humphrey sitting knitting with a look of defeat.
• Education and taxation are also represented in the broadcast, but its unknown how they're represented.

By the end of the broadcast, it's already dawn and Major decides, ‘I’ll say what I like - they all believe me anyway,’ to which Humphrey leaves in disappointment.

See Also

• Spitting Image (lost pilots of British satirical puppet television show; 1983)
• Thatcherworld (partially found BBC TV film; 1993)