James Delingpole James Delingpole

Bitter truths

Bitter truths

Tragically, I missed the recent reality TV show in which celebrity love rat (and, weirdly enough, brother of my old riding teacher) James Hewitt was filmed receiving hand relief from a young woman desperate (very, clearly) to win £10,000. Instead I’m going to talk about something if possible even more depressing: Armando Iannucci’s new sitcom The Thick of It (BBC4, Thursday).

What’s depressing isn’t that it’s bad — it’s not: it’s quite brilliant, the new Yes, Minister — but that it dissects with such merciless accuracy the failings of the New Labour project that you find yourself thinking, ‘Phew! Thank God, we’ve finally seen through those charlatans. Imagine how awful it would have been if we’d gone and elected them for a third term!’, before realising a millisecond later: ‘Oh, Christ…’

The running joke in Yes, Minister was that while politicians may wish to change the world with their big ideas it’s the civil servants who really run the show and forever ensure that things stay exactly as they are because that’s the way Whitehall likes it. At the time, the series probably seemed like a trenchant satire on bureaucracy gone mad. Now, though, it comes across more like a rose-tinted tribute to the golden era when politicians still had ideals and when civil servants weren’t pliable nobodies in the service of sinister spin doctors but voices of tradition and authority with the power and good sense to keep the government’s more excessive idiocies in check.

In The Thick of It when nothing happens it’s not because of Whitehall obstructiveness but because for nothing to happen is at the very heart of the government’s ideology. If something happens, then there’s always the possibility that voters might object, which won’t do at all.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in