Tag: political satire

A Clarke and Dawe style television interview set. A suited interviewer sits in a grey armchair facing a second chair occupied by a figure whose head has been replaced by a framed oil painting of an LNG tanker labelled AUS-INC. and LIQUEFIED SOVEREIGNTY. Small plastic figurines of cheering people stand at the bottom of the frame.

Clarke and Dawe tribute: The PM Explains Gas

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Shell’s Australian chair fronted a Senate inquiry into gas taxation and couldn’t say how much revenue Shell makes from selling Australian gas. She was, however, very clear on the ill-advised part. Urban Wronski channels Clarke and Dawe to interview the Prime Minister about the gas we own, the tax we don’t collect, and the modelling that takes time.

A darkly comic music-hall illustration showing an oversized grotesque figure in a business suit pointing at a gilded mushroom cloud chandelier, while in the background a bombed city silhouette looms and a child holds an almost-empty water bottle beside a drainage culvert.

The Lovely War

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Donald Trump threatens Iran the way he once threatened a recalcitrant steak: same wounded, flinty, infant-king fury. A working homage to Martin Amis — on the Epstein flights, the six-billion-dollar goon squad, the taunting of a proud civilisation, and a nine-year-old girl in Minab waiting for the water that is her birthright. The infant-king has other plans.

A baroque, maximalist digital composite in the style of a satirical political cartoon meets high-church iconography. Donald Trump sits enthroned at the head of a long gilded mahogany table, rendered in soft AI halo-light — the kind of beatific glow normally reserved for Renaissance altarpieces. He wears both a business suit and a suggestion of papal vestments, loosely layered. Around him, courtiers in military medals and tech-bro stubble genuflect, arms outstretched. Eagles, American flags, and a faint suggestion of dollar signs float among the golden light. The composition deliberately mimics Last Supper staging. Background hints at a gilded ballroom-temple with crystal chandeliers. Colour palette: deep crimson, imperial gold, and sickly angelic white. The mood is equal parts reverent and grotesque — Rubens meets Mad magazine. No text overlay.

Trump is not The Messiah, just a very Naughty Boy

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When Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as a divine healer — haloed, beatific, hovering over the sick like a Sistine saviour — the cult of self had finally annexed the cult of Christ. A satirical dispatch, written in homage to Martin Amis, from the gilded ballroom-temple of the Trumpian court: where the joke is on all of us.

Raccoon in a suit sitting between two men at an interview table with a microphone

VANCE DROPS IN

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JD Vance has just returned from negotiations with Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Two C-130s are still on a dirt strip outside Isfahan. And the Vice President would like to explain, in his own words, why this is going tremendously. Urban Wronski channels Clarke and Dawe. Stand by.

Sparse television interview set in the style of Clarke and Dawe: interviewer at desk, suited figure rising to leave, clutching a shopping bag labelled ALBO, Pine Gap radomes faintly visible through studio window behind him.

A Man of His Word

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Bryan Dawe is seated. John Clarke enters in a suit, slightly harried, carrying a reusable shopping bag with “ALBO” written on it in texta.
Australia sent troops to a war it hasn’t declared, through a base it won’t discuss, after a school massacre it can’t explain, while the Prime Minister assures us that transparency is everything. Clarke and Dawe, imagined for the age of Operation Epic Fury.

Are we at War with Iran?

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INTERVIEWER: Are we at war with Iran?
ALBANESE: No.
INTERVIEWER: Then why did they bomb our base?
ALBANESE: Because they’re Iran.
One interviewer. One Prime Minister. Forty-five satellite dishes, three submariners, one Wedgetail aircraft, a peace negotiation bombed flat, a hundred and seventy schoolgirls, and a pocket square without a mark on it. A political interview in the tradition of Clarke and Dawe.

Satirical illustration of a chaotic war cabinet: an orange-tinted central figure gestures at a Middle East map while two suited advisers argue across a table strewn with classified folders. A pale isolated figure sits apart in shadow. A screen shows Tehran under attack. A Caribbean fishing boat is visible through the window.

Trump’s Team at War With Itself

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There is a peculiar kind of drama playing out inside the Trump Bunker of the Bizarre. Its theme? The accidental Armageddon. A government so witless it could not run a bath has launched the most ambitious US military operation in living memory — and nobody in Team Trump can agree on why, for how long, or what winning looks like. Urban Wronski reports in two parts.

Satirical illustration of a large cartoon dog in the Oval Office, its wagging tail scattering military documents, while a small figure holds its leash and an aircraft carrier is visible through the window against a blood-red sky.

America’s Wag-the-Dog Moment

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A flailing administration, a nuclear pretext recycled from the WMD workshop of 2003, and an Israel that appears to be setting the tempo of a potential world war. Before the missiles fly, Urban Wronski asks the question Washington’s press won’t: is this about Iran — or about saving Trump from himself?