Government Affairs Blog

Party Animals - better than being ignored?

Welcome to the Westminster village. Where MPs, researchers, lobbyists and hacks drink, snort, shag and backstab their way to, if not the top, then at least the occasional scrap from the top table.

[NB. A slightly edited version of this entry appears as a review in the current edition of Public Affairs News.]

Meet James, the Cameronesque Tory home affairs spokesman, who is getting more than the job description demands from his sexy young researcher, Ashika, or at least was until he was warned off by the whips, and she found comfort in the arms of cocky government affairs man Scott (random chat up line - "Do you want to hear the lobbying code of conduct?"), who in turn is struggling to deal with the death of his flatmate and colleague Jake in a tequila and cocaine binge-fuelled car crash prompted by his trauma at not being made account manager to a new client. Or at least she would have found solace had devious yet gorgeous red-top scribbler Sophie - Macchiavelli in a miniskirt - not sent her running for the door with a carefully dropped  line that suggested Scott had a somewhat indiscriminate approach to bedding Tory women. She, of course, would know. And then there’s Scott’s brother Danny who is getting no sex or drugs at all – which is probably just as well as on the one occasion he is shown risking so much as a beer he promptly manages to leave details of the new policy his boss is launching the next day in the pub toilet – where it is found by Matt, a colleague of Ashika’s in the office of, naturally, the MP who just happens to be shadowing Danny’s boss. Cue dramatic verbal ambush at the despatch box. Cue quivering collapse of bested minister. Cue juxtaposition of jubilant opposition team and crestfallen government apparatchik. Cue titles…

Marvellous stuff. And, as I tell my non-political friends, just another typical day at the office for us Westminster types. (Yeah, right.)

BBC2’s new political drama, Party Animals, is an entertaining slice of metropolitan twenty-something high-flier lifestyle watching. It’s set, as you might have guessed, in Westminster, with impressive attention to detail on the representations of Portcullis House and St Stephen’s Tavern in particular. But if you’re after political insight then you are going to be disappointed. That it comes from the people who brought you This Life – an entertaining slice of metropolitan twenty-something high-flier lifestyle watching about lawyers – tells you a lot. To be fair most of that is positive. Like This Life it is (mostly) well-scripted, with characters who are already showing signs of developing beyond the single dimension. Like This Life it brings us the battle between cynicism and idealism that rages in young, aspirational heads. And yes, like This Life, it shows us the risk-taking, hedonistic lifestyles of its free and easy young leads, but without being too judgemental. Glam and gorgeous? Or sleazy and sordid? You decide.

But also like This Life, the insight it gives us into the work of its protagonists is pretty superficial. A box set of This Life isn’t going to make you an expert on the English judicial system. And a series of Party Animals certainly isn’t going to give you a nuanced understanding of how policy is formed and legislation passed in the ‘mother of parliaments’.

The junior minister who gets to launch her own policy, devised by her own researcher on the basis of his own studies into disadvantaged youth, and launch it on the floor of the Commons rather than in an op-ed in the Times or a Today programme interview, is not a specimen you are likely to find too often in real life.

And then there's the researcher who is invited into the chief whip’s office to make a valedictory speech before handing in his resignation to his employer (who naturally refuses to accept it) - well, you get the picture…

Political Animals has apparently, been some four years in the developing. When it started out it was going to be all about the bright young spinners of new Labour, but the BBC suits, probably wisely, saw which way the zeitgeist was moving and demanded it be rewritten to bring in Dave Cameron's new Tories too. (No Lib Dems as yet - maybe they thought our activities wouldn't get through the censors?)

Whether the Beeb's second demand, that it be rewritten in such a way as to re-engage (which rather presumes they were ever engaged in the first place) British youth in politics will be fulfilled remains to be seen. (As a regular recruiter of interns in Westminster I shall be awaiting the next batch of applications with particular interest, and the Corporation will no doubt be delighted when I brief them on my findings.) One nod in this direction, though, is the spin-off website www.villagevermin.co.uk, a sort of Z-list political popbitch, which not only pops up in the show from time to time, but has been painstakingly created in the real virtual world (if you follow my drift) as well. Entertaining, if you can cope with the concept of a private gossip site that has cross-party, lobbyist and tabloid journalist contributors.

So does Party Animals cut the mustard? On balance, yes it does. Treat it as a medley of highlights, exaggerations and slightly blunt caricatures of Westminster life. Don't go in expecting the satirical riches of The Thick Of It or the force and flair of a British West Wing.

And what will it do for the image of the political classes? Well, bluntly, we politicians, advisers, spindoctors, journos and public affairs professionals (as they, of course, never get called on Party Animals), are starting from such a low rung on the ladder of public esteem that even a show like this, which has us bed-hopping, coke-snorting, double dealing, scandal stirring and all the rest, will probably, in the end, do us a favour, because it at least portrays us as human. Sometimes vain, sometimes deceitful, sometimes appallingly cynical, but also resourceful, good-humoured and even occasionally capable of acts of compassion (that's apart from the journalists obviously).

At the end of it all, Westminster comes out as a pretty fun and exciting place to be. And, let's face it, there's only one thing worse than being talked about…

George Crozier is an adviser to the Liberal Democrat MPs and a member of the CIPR GAG committee

Footnote: This review was written after two episodes of the show, to meet PAN's copy deadline. Since then the realism of the show has declined still further. The home affairs minister has seemingly still not paid even a fleeting visit to her department and Home Office media spinning seems to be handled by her personal researcher. But then again, I am still watching...