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.
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