“Post Office Limited is stealing my livelihood, my shop, my job, my home, my life savings and my good name,” says Alan Bates, played by Toby Jones in the first episode of the ITV drama about the Horizon scandal. Human stories are the most powerful weapon in politics—which is why it has taken a television series to jolt the government into action over the biggest miscarriage of justice in recent British legal history.
Westminster is often portrayed as a battle of ideas, seen through the prism of ideology, factions and power. Mr Bates vs The Post Office is about the emotional struggles of ordinary hard-working people fighting an establishment institution and the willingness of the elite to hide behind a “Computer Says No” response. This is not a story of left versus right, Labour against Conservative or Brexit against Remain. It is a tale of humanity versus inhumanity. That is what has driven it to the top of the political agenda, forced ministers to draw up emergency plans to fast-track the appeals of hundreds of postmasters and prompted Paula Vennells, the former Post Office boss, to hand back her CBE.
There have been multiple newspaper investigations, public inquiries and parliamentary reports, but as Patrick Spence, the producer of the ITV show, put it: “doing a drama allows the genuine despair, pain and emotional suffering that these people went through to be conveyed in a way that documentary and journalism cannot.” He argued that the drama had tapped into a wider sense of disillusionment with politics. “Lots of people feel as if they are not being heard by their politicians and the big corporations. They have connected with those who have been screaming for help without anyone listening.”
There is something quintessentially British about the campaign by the brave sub-postmasters and mistresses portrayed in the brilliantly written and acted four-part television series. The backdrop moves between the rolling Welsh hills, a Hampshire village and the east Yorkshire seaside town of Bridlington but underlying all the different strands is a shared sense of decency. From the homemade hot scones rushed by Jo Hamilton straight from the oven into her village shop to the Union Jacks fluttering in the Post Offices around the country, the narrative is one of ordinary, hard-working patriotic people being let down by a great British institution, the justice system and politicians.
As Lee Castleton, the former sub-postmaster who was forced to cover legal fees after the Horizon IT system wrongly suggested money was missing, told the BBC on Sunday: “We are just normal run-of-the-mill people. We have legal people with us but it is so difficult and it is like a war… The victims are traumatised.”
When I interviewed some of the sub-postmasters who had been wrongly convicted in 2021, they conveyed to me a sense of bafflement that they had been so badly betrayed by an institution they had trusted. These were not troublemakers; they had chosen to become sub-postmasters because they were pillars of their communities. Jo Hamilton—played by Monica Dolan in the television drama—described how 74 people from her rural Hampshire village turned up at court on the day she was sentenced. “I was in this massive dock and I could hear them all clattering about above me because we’d all been in the café before. It was like in the village hall.” She told me that she had arrived prepared for jail. “I’d always intended to do an HNC [Higher National Certificate] in equine science and I’d never got round to it so I packed the first module along with 14 pairs of pants. I went to Marks and bought myself some multipacks. I thought, I’m not having someone else’s underwear—I planned it like a military exercise.”
In the end, Hamilton did not get a custodial sentence. But Harjinder Butoy was not so lucky. He went to prison after being falsely accused of stealing over £200,000. He told me he had turned up at court assuming “everything’s going to be hunky dory” because he knew he was innocent of all the charges against him. “I was convinced the jury would be on my side because I didn’t do it.” Only when the cell door slammed behind him did he fall apart. “I lost all reputation and respect,” he explained. “That was my biggest loss. One minute you’re a pillar of the community and the next thing you’re nothing.”
The impact of Mr Bates vs The Post Office is a reminder that politics should be about making life better for ordinary people, not who is up or down in the Westminster jungle. That is too often forgotten in the House of Commons, where MPs compete to score petty political points against each other, concentrate on climbing the greasy pole and sometimes behave as if they are above the rules.
There is a wider point, though, about the power of human connection. Many politicians feel most comfortable making intellectual arguments, publishing pledge cards or policy papers, but voters are driven by instinct and emotion too. When people put their X on the ballot at the general election, as well as thinking, “who do I agree with?”, they will also be considering, “who is on my side?” Or even, “who do I like?”
In his classic book The Political Brain, Drew Westen argues that when reason and emotion collide in politics, emotion invariably wins. Political candidates who assume that voters make decisions dispassionately based on “the issues” almost always lose, he says. Elections are determined by the sense people have of a leader’s values, character and instincts rather than specific pledges. Oliver Letwin, the former Conservative cabinet minister, has described the “aroma” surrounding a political party which he says is at least as important as its policies.
Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are both leaders who are driven by intellect rather than emotion. They love nothing better than a five-point plan. Their backgrounds—the City and the law—are based on academic rigour. They hope to convince the voters through their strength of argument. But Mr Bates vs The Post Office shows that the real power in politics comes through human stories. At the start of this election year Sunak and Starmer want to win over voters’ heads, but they also need to conquer their hearts.
