The Jeremy Kyle Show — a reminder that Thatcher did her job well

Never once did I watch more than a passing clip of The Jeremy Kyle Show. The prospect of deriving entertainment from the public humiliation of people who’ve been damaged by the free market barbarism that holds sway in Britain never appealed to me. I grew up in it and am the product of it, the so-called underclass, and thus for someone like me to find anything funny or captivating about people from my background and class being routinely and ritually humiliated on national television would have constituted a craven act of betrayal, desertion even, and thus out of the question.

But what does it tell us about Britain in the second decade of the 21st century that it takes a man to commit suicide after appearing on The Jeremy Kyle show, this anti-working class theatre of cruelty, before common decency prevailed and the show’s broadcaster, ITV, pulled the plug?

It tells us that in certain environmental conditions base medieval values of attacking and punishing those who only crime is to be poor and uneducated or miseducated can and do supplant our capacity for compassion and empathy. It tells us that Thatcher did her job well, shaping not only Britain’s economic system but the dominant cultural values that have also been shaped thereby.