I chose the new prime minister. I chose his head of office and his director of communications. I even chose his new civil servants, the new doorman at No 10 and—in for a penny—I chose his wife.
All, alas, for a radio drama: this Friday, Radio 4 will begin broadcasting the first part of our series, Number 10. Each episode aims to throw light on some aspect of British politics. Far more than in the Commons chamber, it's inside the pillared rooms of Downing Street that the real governance of Britain unfolds. Each of our storylines explores a policy area—whether immigration, carbon reduction, cannabis legalisation, or tussles with the palace—and shows how nothing is as simple as it seems.
I suggest that it will be the first ever British broadcast drama series to take contemporary politics seriously. There have been thrillerish one-offs (A Very British Coup), silly sideways glances (Mrs Pritchard), wrong-end-of-the-telescope glimpses (Party Animals) and no end of comic series.
Like many others, I worship at the shrine of Yes, Minister and its distaff offspring, The Thick of It. Yet I wonder why we constantly favour these satiric views? Ever since the days of Hogarth and Fielding, British politicians have constantly been depicted as on-the-make and egotistical, rarely stooping to do anything public-spirited. No British drama has ever spent simply 60 minutes watching a prime minister and his staff as they try to execute a policy.
They've done this for the man in Washington, where—love it or loathe it—they're happy to make a hero out of their president. Once elected, the US office-holder takes on a saintliness. We just don't do that in Britain. Every Blair drama has presented him as feckless or grinning or even imbecilic. Our desire to squeeze all politicians into the Jim Hacker mould means that serious debate rarely gets an outing in political drama.
Yet British prime ministers are made for drama. Whereas the US president is invulnerable (little blue dresses apart), for at least four years, the British PM is constantly jostled by his rivals in cabinet, heckled by disgruntled backbenchers and cross-questioned by the press. The US president never faces anything like it.
It's this need to be ready for everything which makes the work of the British PM so fascinating—especially for a dramatist. Our PM is not hidden inside a White House or swept away in Air Force One; he travels by train and hangs out in his constituency. He's vulnerable, he's human, he's (almost) one of us.
We've done our best to try and stay just ahead of the game and yet within the bounds of likelihood. In the opening episode, the PM determines to push through an amnesty for illegal immigrants. We chose this precisely because it is a debate worth airing. When Liam Byrne, minister of state at the home office, mentioned the possibility of an amnesty last year, John Reid came down on him like the wolf on the fold. And yet Spain has done it several times, with little adverse effect on the economy.
But little of that detail cuts much mustard in the world of daily politics, where matters are dictated by soundbites and kneejerks. So even our fictional PM has to let his dream go when, in the same episode, the home secretary goes AWOL, a tube train crashes and someone else loses the entire House of Lords.
I'm proud to think that Number 10 might be an advertisement for politics and those involved in it. If the series has a slogan, it's summed up in this speech by one of the PM's special advisers: "I've never lived in a council flat. I had a privileged upbringing, private school, best university. And that's precisely why I think it is my duty to use all that education to fight to make life better for everyone else. And you know what, even our opponents want to do that—Tories, Liberals, even Greens—different methods, different beliefs, but in the end we're all the same, we all want to do something for people. It's called public service."
This is a frighteningly old-fashioned belief. I've wheeled it out at dinner parties and had a rough time of it. But it strikes to the core of what Number 10 tries to say about politicians. I still believe that (nearly) everyone in politics wants to make the world a better place. I want to do it the "right" way and my political opponents want to do it the "wrong" way, but they still want to do it.
So this is a series about people who want to make the world a better place. They may spend most of their time fighting fires, flak-catching and watching their backs, but they're still in the game to make Britain safer, richer, happier. Maybe politicians are the good guys, after all.
Starring Anthony Sher, Haydn Gwynne and Stephen Mangan, "Number 10" starts at 9pm on Friday 7th September on BBC Radio 4.
