HBO’s John Oliver will occasionally use Last Week Tonight to try to educate American viewers on a subject they know little about, but the subject of Oliver’s Sunday wrath this time was not the dictatorship of Turkmenistan, but his native Britain’s Conservative Party which is down in the polls ahead of their July 4 election. Being the host of a nominal comedy show gave Oliver the impression that he could compare Conservatives to “a wild badger” and label them “cunts, fuckpigs, and weirdos” and be taken seriously.
Reacting to a man who lamented that Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has run a “dull” campaign because he believes he does not need to risk anything because of his party’s big lead in the polls, Oliver ranted, “Yeah, maybe that's true, but after everything you've seen tonight, you can probably understand why people are much more concerned about who's leaving than who's coming next. If a wild badger broke into your home and fucked everything up for 14 straight years, tearing everything apart, you might think ‘you know what, we’ll argue about redecorating choices later, right now, that badger's got to fucking go.’”
He continued, “And I will say, if the U.K. can successfully rid itself of the Tories next month, that's not cause for a shrug, that's cause for a celebration. And I know that celebration's not something that comes naturally to Britons.”
Oliver added that, “if Britain can extricate itself from the party whose unremitting cruelty has stained the last decade and a half of British life, that does deserve to be marked. And I know dancing in the street doesn't really fit with the British character. So, instead, why not celebrate what's hopefully about to happen with the most British symbol imaginable: a rainstorm.”
Now being drenched with great amounts of water, Oliver proceeded to urge Brits to vote out the Tories, “because on July 4, Britain has a chance to wash itself clean of 14 miserable years of Conservative rule. And it's a chance it simply must take.”
The irony of the Mother Country holding its election on the 4th of July was not lost on Oliver, “If I may quote Bill Pullman, yelling about aliens, if we do this, ‘The 4th of July will no longer be known as just an American holiday, but also as the day when Britain looked at the Conservatives who've driven the entire country into a ditch, and said in one voice, loud and clear, ‘Fuck off into the sun, you cunts, fuckpigs, and weirdos. You tossers, wankers, dicksplashes, and cockwombles.’ If Britain stands together, this July the 4th, it will finally celebrate its Independence Day. That is our show. Thank you so much for watching.”
It is true that the Conservatives have been in power and no majority lasts forever, but earlier in his British civics “lesson” Oliver was particularly incensed at the performance of Britain’s beloved, but woefully underperforming National Health Service. For Oliver, this was Conservatives’ fault, not the faults inherent to single payer health care systems. It should also be noted that the Conservative Party embraces some positions that would put its leaders in the U.S. Democratic Party which could lead to its own supporters being fed up with it.
Here is a transcript for the June 23 show:
HBO Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
6/24/2024
12:03 AM ET
JOHN OLIVER: Yeah, maybe that's true, but after everything you've seen tonight, you can probably understand why people are much more concerned about who's leaving than who's coming next. If a wild badger broke into your home and fucked everything up for 14 straight years, tearing everything apart, you might think “you know what, we’ll argue about redecorating choices later, right now, that badger's got to fucking go.”
And I will say, if the U.K. can successfully rid itself of the Tories next month, that's not cause for a shrug, that's cause for a celebration. And I know that celebration's not something that comes naturally to Britons. The country's most famous motivational slogan is "Keep calm and carry on" and even that morale booster basically amounted to, "I know you're about to die, but there's no need to make a scene." That was supposed to get us through World War II!
But if Britain can extricate itself from the party whose unremitting cruelty has stained the last decade and a half of British life, that does deserve to be marked. And I know dancing in the street doesn't really fit with the British character. So, instead, why not celebrate what's hopefully about to happen with the most British symbol imaginable: a rainstorm because on July 4, Britain has a chance to wash itself clean of 14 miserable years of Conservative rule. And it's a chance it simply must take.
If I may quote Bill Pullman, yelling about aliens, if we do this, "The 4th of July will no longer be known as just an American holiday, but also as the day when Britain looked at the Conservatives who've driven the entire country into a ditch, and said in one voice, loud and clear, “Fuck off into the sun, you cunts, fuckpigs, and weirdos. You tossers, wankers, dicksplashes, and cockwombles.”
If Britain stands together, this July the 4th, it will finally celebrate its Independence Day. That is our show. Thank you so much for watching.
