The grown-ups are back in charge, the adults are back in the room. Finally, some decency has returned to our politics. Calm, sensible. Blah blah blah.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am as pleased that this general election is over as the NCPs (Nice Clever People). The Tories were spent. Like Lord Pickles after a pudding bowl of Califig, they had to go. 

Of course, our comedians and satirists are, for the most part, delighted. 

Having worked themselves into paroxysms of fury over the past five — no, eight; no, fourteen — years, their mortal enemy, the far right, pseudo-fascist, neo-Nationalist, hyper-Fatcherite Conservative Party that exists in their heads, has been stuffed and mounted. Game, set and match to the Sensibles. New balls, please.

And, ideally, some new material.

It’s not that there won’t be plenty to laugh at as a flattened Conservative Party twitches like a cartoon cat run over by a steamroller.

Mark Francois’ eruption — “This election was BENT!” — after missing the 1922 vote got things off to a gloriously inauspicious start. The jokes will write themselves. Rishi Sunak is currently leading a punchline with 120 MPs and 5000 local councillors attached. Oh, and Ben Houchen. For the moment.

But the key target now, surely, should be the government.

Indeed, the argument that so many of our prominent comedians are naturally anti-government as opposed to specifically anti-Conservative has been regularly trotted out over the past decade to combat accusations of bias.

Finally, we get to see if that’s true. Certainly, most joke writers worth their salt will find lots to skewer.

For a start, branding yourself “a government of service” is asking for trouble. When has clothing a new administration in moralistic language ever been a good idea? I’m hoping for a minister getting caught checking into Brent Cross Travelodge with a couple of guardsmen by the end of the week.

Great British Energy sounds like something Jim Hacker would come up with. Then there’s the Prime Minister himself, with his penchants for holier-than-thou sermonising and ruthless opportunism — never better evidenced than in the Commons on Tuesday when he paid a cloying tribute to Mother of the House Diane Abbott having spent half the election trying to end her career.

“All the funny comedians are right wing,” remarked Peter Cook in 1978’s Christmas Radio Times: 

All the ones I know vote solid Tory, possibly because they are anxious to pay as little tax as possible. Also, I suspect there is something endemically funny about being right wing, and I’m right wing through and through, probably through sheer greed. I’m middle class, the son of a colonial servant, and I have never voted socialist in my life. Can you think of a funny left-wing British comedian? Or a funny left-wing magazine? Private Eye isn’t left-wing — or right, for that matter. It’s simply anarchic.

Of course, Cook was stirring the pot. He couldn’t resist it. In fact, he saw it as his job — as far as he saw anything as his job. Unlike Timpson, he took no prisoners.

And it would be absurd for me to suggest that the new government can only be mocked from the right, or left, or by those like me who decided not to vote at all.

I think we need far more comedy that isn’t explicitly political. As Jack Dee put it, “No-one ever said, ‘Yeah, but what’s Tommy Cooper really saying?’ No-one says, ‘What were Morecambe and Wise really saying?’ They weren’t. They were just being funny.” 

One of my hopes, now that Labour is back in power, is that the culture might unclench a little

But we need satire, too. Indeed, with the Conservatives currently being unrolled onto a gurney and wheeled into intensive care, we need it more today than for a long time.

One of my hopes, now that Labour is back in power, is that the culture might unclench a little, and we can stop taking everything — including ourselves — quite so seriously. It would feel, ironically, like the correct response to a Prime Minister who is desperately keen to appear serious.

The initial reaction, however, from people who should, like Peter Cook, be unable to resist kicking against the consensus, unable to resist pricking the pomposity of the powerful, has not been too promising. Perhaps they are just celebrating what is, by any reasonable estimation, a famous victory. The job of joking, however, awaits.

The adults might be back in the room but a satirist’s place, whatever their politics, is outside — highlighting hypocrisy, laughing loudly and creating trouble.

At its best there’s bravery to it. Bigger balls, please.