Martin Amis is wrong, Jeremy Corbyn is a comedy mastermind

You can imagine it all too easily: David Cameron looks at a room full of speechwriters and playfully says, “Right, come on, boys, let's get some cracking jokes in there—we need people to think I'm funny.” Close your eyes and try it with George Osborne—the image will be equally vivid. But imagining the same scene with Jeremy Corbyn is an impossibility—not simply because Corbyn's past doesn't include employment in PR, but because he doesn't need help being funny.

Corbyn’s comic credentials were recently called into question by the novelist Martin Amis, who described the Labour leader as “humourless” in a stinging article in the Sunday Times. “Many journalists have remarked on this,” Amis wrote, “usually in a tone of wry indulgence. In fact it is an extremely grave accusation, imputing as it does a want of elementary nous. To put it crassly, the humourless man is a joke—and a joke he will never get.”

Amis is entitled to his opinion, but his personal opposition to the Labour leader appears to have rendered him oblivious to the subtleties of Corbyn’s humour. When giving speeches to large crowds of people, Corbyn deploys jokes in an understated and intelligent manner. In contrast, as he proves whenever he opens his mouth in the House of Commons, David Cameron can’t help coming across as shrill, crass and predictable.

Despite Corbyn's huge grassroots popularity, his reputation for humourlessness has stuck. This could be partly due to the geography teacher demeanour he displays at the ballot box—scowling over his glasses at the naughty Tories. Seasoned comedy observers are aware that this is all part of the act, but the mainstream media remains in the dark. This supposed character trait has even inspired a Twitter account—the ever so ironically titled @corbynjokes. Sample tweet: “My wife went to the Caribbean. Jamaica? That's right. She's negotiating reparations for the horrors of imperial slavery.”

Corbyn’s speech to the Labour Party Conference gave him the opportunity to flex his comedic muscle. He turned the charges levelled at him by various newspapers into fodder for jokes. The Mail Online, for example, insinuated that he yearned for an asteroid to wipe-out humanity—Corbyn responded in a self-effacing yet acerbic manner: “Now, asteroids are pretty controversial. And It’s not the kind of policy I would want this party to adopt without a full debate in conference so can we have the debate later in the week?” He then apologised for not going back in time to reprimand his great-great-great-grandfather who the Daily Express had revealed was apparently an “evil monster” in a workhouse. Had Cameron begun in the same way, he would have scoffed and gloated about these headlines, robbing them of humour, Corbyn's calm dissection highlighted their absurdity.

A partisan audience the Brighton conference might have been, but they needed no goading into laughter. Corbyn didn't have to turn up the volume or signal the joke long before its punchline; the audience could simply hear in his delivery a man who understands intonation and timing. His is an old-fashioned sense of humour, perhaps, but in the PG Wodehouse not the Bernard Manning sense of the word.

Contrast this with David Cameron, who clunks painfully into “funny” gear as though riding a rusty bike. It's Back to the Future Day, someone has briefed him. Don’t forget to say something about how that ageing socialist Jeremy Corbyn needs a time machine. That is not wit. That is a cringeworthy line deployed by a Prime Minister desperate to appear down with the kids. Even worse was this week’s offering, when Cameron declined an invitation from Corbyn to guarantee that the NHS will avoid a winter crisis this year, and instead joked that he would award the Labour leader “full Marx” for creating his own winter crisis in his party. The Prime Minister seemed incredibly pleased with himself for delivering a pun that a 12-year-old would be embarrassed to be associated with.

Cameron commits a cardinal comedy sin: he smiles gleefully while delivering his own material. He is like a small boy who has just learned the word “bum”; he is making no one but himself laugh. He fails to grasp understatement, believes that simply bellowing something makes it funnier and recently sunk to new depths—making sex jokes in his conference speech.

Not for nothing does the Commons invite comparisons to the playground. When you can count on the jeering crowd to back you up, you can trick yourself into thinking that calling your opponents names passes for humour. Jeremy Corbyn doesn't play to the gallery in this way and this ought to be, if not commended, at least recognised. This reticence to join in with such childish behaviour doesn't mean he lacks a sense of humour, on the contrary he has an acute awareness of the difference between good and bad material.

All politicians need to be at least five per cent stand-up comedian—look at the way Churchill is revered for his witticisms. Corbyn has already demonstrated his comedic prowess to the party faithful, it’s now up to his team to ensure that the rest of the country sees his wit in action. The more he relaxes during PMQs and lets his subtle humour shine through, the more apparent his opponent’s inadequacies will become. In the long run the joke will be on those who underestimated Jeremy Corbyn's pulling power.