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In the chaos of coalition, the best storyteller will win
James Graham
The only thing we know for sure is that no one knows
anything. The one thing we do know is that on the morning of 8 May, as the
results fail to declare a winner for a historically unprecedented second time in
a row, a lot of people will claim to know something. But they won’t. No one
will.
I’m a playwright and a screenwriter, not a journalist.
Therefore I don’t know anything either. The one truth I do hold to be
self-evident, when it comes to drama, is that narrative is key. Mentor after
mentor, from Anthony Minghella to Harvey Weinstein to Josie Rourke, has drilled
into me the same principle: story, story, story; plot, plot, plot. It is only by
applying a structure to life’s random events, in the way that films, plays and
novels do, that anything makes any sense. Meaning reveals itself in the telling.
On 8 May, whoever controls the narrative acquires the keys.
In his account of the 2010 general election, Andrew Adonis
revealed that Labour were convinced that, in the event of no clear winner, David
Cameron would “do a Salmond”. In the 2007 Holyrood elections, Labour lost seats
and the SNP gained them, but no party had a majority. Alex Salmond, one of the
most gifted performers on the political stage, declared that Labour had suffered
a crushing defeat. In fact, Labour ended up with only one seat fewer than the
SNP, but the narrative Salmond had spun was so strong, and his delivery so
convincing, that the media ran with that line, and he won the day. To put it
another way, one of the reasons Salmond became first minister is because he told
everyone he was. And they believed him.
In the end, Cameron didn’t do a Salmond”. That’s because he
wasn’t the lead narrator of the drama. Centre stage then was Nick Clegg. It was
he who declared that the largest party should have the first right to try to
govern – and he was so successful in pitching this storyline that “Clegg’s rule”
is now, bizarrely, assumed by many to be the constitutional norm. It isn’t. That
was just Clegg, deciding something was true, and making it true.
Churchill said history was written by the winners. On 8
May, the future will be written by the most convincing loser. Cameron, assuming
the Conservatives are the largest party, will pitch the story that he has won,
or at least didn’t lose; Ed Miliband, as leader of the second largest party,
might claim that only he can unite the parties across the Commons to pass
legislation. Cameron might counter that a government made up of the second,
third and fourth parties has no legitimacy; Miliband might remind Cameron that
he has now failed to win an election twice, and should resign. Neither of them
will be right, and neither of them wrong.
The media will chip in, of course. Last time round, the
civil service briefed political editors extensively in the hope that they might
keep a confused public informed, but it wasn’t to be. The tabloids knew that
Brown was constitutionally obliged to remain in Downing Street until an
alternative was presented, but they pushed the “squatter” narrative anyway, and
it worked. He walked early. A cynic may assume it is unlikely they’ll be
levelling the same at Cameron this week – in fact the opposite is more likely. I
can see the Sun’s mockup of Miliband now –a swag bag, a black-and-white top:
“Thief!”
Story, story, story; plot, plot, plot. And plots are driven
by protagonists. When I wrote the TV drama Coalition, Nick Clegg was my
(probably obvious) choice as leading man – his arc, from ideological outsider to
compromised insider, seemed to reveal the most about those complex five days and
their aftermath.
People died. 19 Labour MPs, from sheer exhaustion at the
stress, the fact that every day the government might fall
Often it might be about trying to capture the mood of a
particular moment. My polling station play The Vote will be broadcast live from
the Donmar Warehouse on election night, featuring 40 actors from Judi Dench to
Mark Gatiss, Nina Sosanya and Catherine Tate. The mechanics are those of a farce
– one thing goes wrong, it escalates, and chaos ensues. Hopefully the reason the
audiences are laughing is that it reflects the confusion we feel, and will
continue to feel, in these maddening next few days. Or often it’s about
reflecting an emotion, and anxiety. The Angry Brigade, at the Bush Theatre,
looks at young political radicals of the 1970s disillusioned by the political
establishment. And I’m far from being the only one contributing drama to this
national conversation – Jack Thorne gave us Hope at the Royal Court, the
Liverpool Everyman is running the U-Decide season, Channel 4 is experimenting
with the satire Ballot Monkeys, and there are many more.
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It was my play This House that first cemented my geeky love
of all things parliamentary, based on the high drama and low farce of the Labour
minority government of 1974. The parallels with what’s coming next will be even
starker now. And anyone thinking that governing as a minority is favourable to
coalition should be warned.
People died – 19 Labour MPs in total, many of them from
sheer exhaustion at the stress, the all-night sittings, and the fact that every
single day the government might fall. I found their stories often very moving.
Joe Harper, one of the whips, died after delaying an operation so he could be
around to vote. The gravely ill Alfred “Doc” Broughton, a staunch Labour man all
his life, was the one vote missing from the confidence motion that saw the
government finally fall after five years. One single vote. His heart stopped
beating five days later, and he died a broken man.
Given how public everything is now, we’re unlikely to see
all the scenes of the time repeated: fights in the corridors – even once in the
chamber, when Michael Heseltine swung the mace – and Labour and Tory fists
shedding blood on the green benches; MPs running down Whitehall from the Red
Lion pub as the division bell (hooked up in the pub lounge) sounded, giving them
exactly eight minutes to drop their pint and leg it to the lobby. Tricks and
games more associated with the playground came to the fore. A common wheeze by
the whips was to have your party’s MPs leave the palace loudly shouting “Bye!”
as they ostensibly headed home, leading your rivals to think they had enough on
their side to call a vote. In fact, the exiting MPs would sneak down into the
Guy Fawkes cellar and hide for a while until the vote was called – then you
sprang your ambush.
One whip phoned a Liberal MP pretending to be a BBC
reporter, offering a fake interview to get their opposite number out of the
palace. Sick, ill and dying members were brought into New Palace Yard from
hospital and nodded through. Dignity is hard to maintain in a hung parliament.
But it’s the ideological battles that face any minority
government that are the life or the death of them. And they will be little
different from those of 1974: a European referendum splitting the Tories; a
failed Scottish referendum causing the Scottish Nationalists to abandon Labour;
a country with an identity crisis praying for someone – anyone – to provide a
vision.
Lyndon B Johnson’s first rule of politics – that its
“practitioners need to be able to count” – will be crucial to the survival of
the next government. But that’s for later. In the first seconds, minutes, and
hours that follow the exit poll on Thursday night, get ready. It won’t be the
best mathematicians who decide our fate – it’ll be the best storytellers.