The current Labour government grows ever more farcical. Despite its promise to \u2018tread lightly\u2019 on people\u2019s lives, we\u2019ve seen war declared on farmers, private schools, pubs, humour at work and even allotment owners. This week came the news that drivers over the age of 70 must take compulsory driving tests, with a mandatory ban if they fail \u2013 presumably so that, when younger relatives start ushering them towards the \u2018assisted dying\u2019 clinic, they won\u2019t be able to make a quick getaway. Starmer, on winning the election, promised the \u2018sunlight of hope\u2019, yet things have rarely felt gloomier. Rachel Reeves may have wept for the nation in parliament last month, but its miseries are so often of her devising.<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t help wondering what The Thick of It would make of it all. In Armando Iannucci\u2019s satire on 21st-century politics, which ran from 2005\u20132012, ludicrous policies like the above, some of them apparently dreamt up on the hoof, might have been all in a day\u2019s work for characters like Labour MP Nicola Murray (Rebecca Front) \u2013 whose greatest policy idea is wooden toys \u2013 or Lib Dem Fergus Williams (who buys a bank \u2018out of social embarrassment\u2019). But how would Peter Mannion MP, the series\u2019 urbane, likeable Tory, react to them?<\/p>\n
Mannion (as played by RSC stalwart Roger Allam) is an old-school Conservative from the Major or late-Thatcher era. He studied classics at university, still smokes and, though married, has the mandatory lovechild with a parliamentary colleague.<\/p>\n
Increasingly adrift in the 21st century, Mannion is an analogue politician in a digital world. Dressed stubbornly in suit and tie, he winces at phrases like \u2018silicone playground\u2019 and can\u2019t even grapple with the functions on his Nokia dumbphone (\u2018Is this \u201csettings\u201d? I think I\u2019ve just taken a photo of my feet\u2019). Called a \u2018digitard\u2019 by one character, he\u2019s described by another as being \u2018tuned 24\/7 to the Yesterday Channel watching Cash in the Attic and wondering why it\u2019s taking place inside his head\u2019.<\/p>\n
Much of the comedy in Mannion\u2019s scenes comes from seeing this relatively dignified politician (apparently based on David Davis, but with an obvious smattering of Ken Clarke as well) wrestle with the new touchy-feely, hug-a-hoodie inanities of David Cameron\u2019s Conservative rebranding.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m modern!\u2019 he protests at one point. \u2018I say \u201cblack\u201d instead of \u201ccoloured\u201d. I think women are a good thing. I have no problems with gays \u2013 many of them are very well turned out, especially the men. Why is it this last year I\u2019m being made to feel as if I\u2019m always two steps behind, like I can\u2019t programme a video or convert everything back to old money?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018You\u2019ve still got a video?\u2019 his aide asks incredulously. Mannion is a Victor Meldrew before his time, a man tormented to a state of anguish by the sheer silliness of modern life. He is endlessly afflicted by spin doctors and spads who feel the most useful thing he can do is take his tie off; by newspapers which catch him smoking or holding (catastrophically) a bottle of champagne; by members of the public who leave toxic comments on his blog (\u2018You always have a pained expression on your face. Do you take it up the chutney?\u2019). Frequently, losing his cool, he starts to spit out strings of expletives (you need to hear Allam, a classical actor with a voice as beautiful as Michael Gambon\u2019s, snarling the f-word to realise how it\u2019s done or why that word even exists).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In calmer moments, he lapses into an ironic lethargy several steps beyond despair as though, realising the futility of his existence, there is little else to do but make drawling, jaded asides about it. In a post-Blair world of \u2018uniparty\u2019 soundbites and \u2018caring\u2019 initiatives, conservatism itself seems to be collapsing. Asked by Tory director of communications Stewart Pearson \u2013 the bane of his life, whose mission is to \u2018detoxify\u2019 the Tory brand \u2013 if he\u2019s \u2018up to speed\u2019 with the \u2018new line\u2019, Mannion lapses into sarcasm:<\/p>\n
\nWell, I don\u2019t know, am I? Because I get people stopping me in the street and saying \u2018Are you still for locking up yobbos?\u2019 and I say \u2018Yeah, of course we are!\u2019 And then I think, are we? Because maybe I missed a memo from you. Maybe I should understand yobbos now\u2026 or not even call them yobbos. Call them young men with issues around stabbing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
If Mannion, with his grey suits and black sense of humour, represents an age of lost common sense, Stewart Pearson (Vincent Franklin) is the man who has no intention of finding it. A kind of walking rainbow flag, always dressed in brightly coloured shirts (untucked and open two buttons), Pearson is the coming era made flesh. He\u2019s the kind of man (we all know them) who drinks ginseng tea, wears a high-visibility tabard to ride a bike, and whose dementing natural habitat is the whiteboard brainstorming session: \u2018Let\u2019s architecturalise this\u2026 Let\u2019s graphicise and three-dimensionalise our response\u2026 Time is a leash on the dog of ideas.\u2019<\/p>\n
\nIn a post-Blair world of \u2018uniparty\u2019 soundbites and \u2018caring\u2019 initiatives, conservatism itself seems to be collapsing<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2018What was that word I used this morning?\u2019 he demands of Mannion at one point. \u2018You used a lot of words,\u2019 says Mannion wearily. \u2018It was like a fucking Will Self lecture.\u2019 The Thick of It ended in 2012 \u2013 a year or two before \u2018woke\u2019 came in to land \u2013 but now and then you find it deliciously ahead of the curve. <\/p>\n
In an episode of series 4, Mannion is summoned by Stewart to attend an out-of-town \u2018thought bubble\u2019 group seminar \u2013 the kind of life-sapping, compulsory, organised infantilisation we\u2019re now accustomed to from our betters. At one point, the characters take part in a 20-questions bonding game where they must guess the political concept written on their foreheads. Mannion, with the word \u2018inclusivity\u2019 flapping above his eyes on a Post-It note, asks a series of increasingly exasperated questions. \u2018Am I a sensible, solid concept?\u2019 (\u2018No\u2019). \u2018Would I be comfortable talking to Andrew Marr about this concept on television?\u2019 (\u2018No\u2019). \u2018Am I \u201cdiversity\u201d?\u2019 \u2018Oh for fuck\u2019s sake,\u2019 he snaps when he rips off the label. \u2018Inclusivity\u2019s practically the same as diversity.\u2019<\/p>\n
Did the writers know then that in the coming decade these two abstract nouns would batter us over the head until we were gurgling in prone stupefaction? Or that the age of Stewart Pearson \u2013 that era of bullying power-play shrouded in bright primary colours \u2013 had barely begun? Most of us these days have become some form of Peter Mannion \u2013 looking at the wreckage of things we once believed in (Radio 4, the sanctity of certain prizes, Oxbridge, the National Trust, you name it) and, like him, asking in bewilderment: \u2018How the sow\u2019s tits did this happen? Nothing matters any more. Politics, faith, values, whatever your thing is. Nothing.\u2019<\/p>\n
How would Mannion have survived an era of take-the-knee, pronoun badges and rainbow lanyards, or reacted to a government bent on destroying all that he and his supporters hold most dear? It\u2019s certainly kinder to him \u2013 though a loss to the viewer \u2013 that we were never allowed to find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The current Labour government grows ever more farcical. Despite its promise to \u2018tread lightly\u2019 on people\u2019s lives, we\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-340844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115020866782919420","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}