Michael White on “In the Thick of it”

Michael White opines on the latest series of In the Thick of it. He finds it too cynical.

Except whenever I watched ITTOI – and I looked at the first episode of the new series this week – I came away feeling it lacked heart, lacked sympathy, lacked good guys, let alone honest ambitions. In that sense it’s the exact opposite of another highly professional show about politics, The West Wing. Beautifully written and acted, it is insufferably high-minded, “a parallel universe for liberals”, as one American friend put it in the Bush era.

I have to say, it’s the cynicism that I like about it. However, there is something revealing about White himself and the cosy relationship between the political journalist and the Westminster village.

Having a little heart matters. You can mock the political trade, its hypocrisies and its inanities, but this isn’t Georgian England, they’re not criminals, oligarchs and brutes for James Gilray to abuse in his immortal cartoons. But you’ve also got to try to like them a bit, even respect what politics’ practitioners, however hopeless, are trying to do.

Where has White been this past few months? If the expenses scandal told us anything, it told us that they are criminals, oligarchs and brutes. The evidence before us is that they are nothing more than bumbling, incompetent self-serving scum. And if White and the rest of his profession weren’t such a bunch of lap dogs, they would have reported the systematic fraud being committed against the UK taxpayer.

“The Thick of it”, has it just right, I think. Although, to be fair to White, he is right about “Yes Minister”.