← Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
How to tell England’s story: James Graham, playwright
00:43:29
What did Gareth Southgate get right about national identity?
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- [00:00]
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- [01:29]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
Hello, welcome to Political Thinking. What is England? What are its values? What does it stand for? Is it a good old fashioned cuppa? A bacon sarnie? The memory of spitfires? A game of cricket? The king? Or is it Charlie? XCX? Chicken Tikka? Bukayo Saka? What does the flag of St. George represent? My guest on Political Thinking this week we wrestled with those questions in his hit play Dear England. Inspired by the England football manager Gareth Southgate's letter to his fellow countrymen, a TV version will hit our screens this summer just before the World Cup. James Graham has a claim to be our national writer, having written plays and TV dramas which explore the deep divides caused by things like the miners strike and the Brexit referendum, as well as charting huge moments in in the country's life, the collapse of the Labour government at the end of the 70s, the beginning of the end of Margaret Thatcher's premiership and many others. He explores the defining themes of our age national identity, patriotism, the failure of the elites. But all his stories are told with a passionate belief in the merit of listening to those you don't agree with. James Graham welcome back to Political it's been a few years.
- [02:53]
James Graham (Playwright)
It has lots changed.
- [02:54]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
A lot has changed and that's one of the things I want to explore with you. But before I do that play, dear England, it's already got a huge audience, it's touring the country now, but it's going to come to our TV screens just before the World Cup. Now, at one level, it's a fun story about football, but is it also about what it means to be English? And do you want it to be seen in that way and to kick off a conversation about that?
- [03:19]
James Graham (Playwright)
Without question. And that's not me even imposing that on the story. Because actually what this is about, at the heart of Gareth Southgate's project, was asking that very question of these young men. And he'd realized that actually previous managers, because of understandable pressures and a short term knee jerk response to failing, they used to just sort of have a really quick response to the problem of English football failing. And Gareth Southgate, to me, his genius was to implement a long term plan. He said, we're not going to fix this by the next tournament. Going to take two or three tournaments to get there. So he calmed down and he asked these young men something they had never been asked before. What does it mean to you to be English?
- [04:00]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And he actually hangs up in your play, at least the St. George's flag.
- [04:03]
James Graham (Playwright)
St. George's flag, yeah. Which, when we took it on the road recently on tour, obviously that that flag has been in national dialogue at the moment. The image of that has been seen flying on lampposts around towns. And it is a very, for some, a very inspiring image. For some, it's a very provocative, threatening image. And I was nervous, we were nervous as a theatre company, to turn up and just wave this FL on a stage. You wouldn't think that would feel provocative, but it did. But yes, what I really love about what Gareth did is actually, or what it presents to me as a playwright is it's that very, very rare thing that it is a very hopeful story where something that was bad got made better in our national life. The England football team was failing and they are now doing better than they ever have done since 1966. And he did that by identifying a problem, coming up with a very clear solution and a very clear time frame and asking some pretty actually difficult questions about the fundamentals of what was gone, what was going wrong.
- [05:01]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And he was wrestling, in a sense, wasn't he, with a concept many people wrestle with is England now, you could say Britain. We'll come onto the difference in a second, perhaps. But is England really about wartime values? Is it about Granddad winning the Military Cross? Is it about the Queen, as in the late Queen? Is it about those values? Or is it about these young men, often from the inner cities, often from an ethnic minority, often for whom some of those things in England's past seem sort of positively alien?
- [05:35]
James Graham (Playwright)
Absolutely. Well, Gareth's version of that question, again, why I personally find it so inspiring, so useful, is that it was answered not with, I guess, the tone of modern discourse or change makers currently around the world. If you think of current leaders around the world, those questions were asked quite bombastically and often with cruelty or bullying or brashness. Gareth asked it with sort of kindness and decency. And I think those actually are some of the English values imagined or otherwise, that we like to think of. Compassion, kindness, gentleness, fair play. He didn't want his England football team to be boastful or to be unkind or unfair. And a lot of people resisted that. People thought, again, especially in this modern age, that that's a lack of strength, that weakness, vulnerability is not the way to advance forward. Anything. But he thought, no. Being vulnerable, being kind, being compassionate, being decent, those were his English values. And included in that, as to your question, was a sense of inclusivity. So saying to Phil Foden, a white working class lad from Stockport, how is your England, how is your town, how is your sense of your identity different from Raheem Sterling, who was born in Jamaica but came to London at a very early age? And Rahee Stolen is a massive patriot. He loves being English. So the answers he got were not necessarily what you would expect, but they were complex, paradoxical, interesting, nuanced. And he managed to somehow put that all together into a box and go, this is the new England story that we're gonna tell.
- [07:06]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And when you wrote the play, it was about the run up to that 2021 Euro championship. You've now adapted it. Are you trying to do something different? You trying to add something as you think? No, I know when this is. This is going out in 2026. It's going out just before those St. George's flags will fly all over England ahead of England's participation in the World Cup. Is there something you want to say this time around?
- [07:33]
James Graham (Playwright)
It's very helpful that unlike when we first put it out on stage, the story was still going. We put it on the National Theatre stage and then took it to the West End between the Qatar World cup and the Euros in Germany. And so the story was still sort of unknown how it was going to end. And you. There was all that hope that maybe Just maybe the stars were aligning and Gareth Southgate was going back to Germany. And given it was that team that he lost against when he missed his penalty, it felt like we could bring the cup home. That didn't happen. But actually, for a writer, now it's complete and he's resigned and the Gareth Southgate project is over. It's really helpful to be able to step back and look at it in its totality. And I mean, I know I sound like I've drank the Kool Aid, but to me there is something just universally positive about what he did. Not only did the results increase, a semi final, final, quarter final final, a succession of runs that have never happened in the 150 year history of that team, but also we feel better about the team. These lads actually made us feel proud because of their values, attitude and conduct. And the fact that Gareth Southgate used to talk about that. He talked about that in the letter you mentioned. He said, it's how we conduct ourselves. I just find that so romantically lovely that a sporting manager who should be so focused on results and trophies and winning. He said there's something about Englishness that goes back to that. It's how we behave and how we treat each other. And I think if that can't unify the progressive left and the conservative right good behavior, then what can?
- [09:07]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And that's interesting. You as a playwright like the idea of uniting people of very different views and frankly, very different views from your own.
- [09:17]
James Graham (Playwright)
Without a doubt. And I mean, I wrestle with this and I struggle with what is the balance. Do I sometimes have a responsibility to call things out if they are so clearly wrong? But I think the best way to examine upsetting, controversial, difficult issues is to give those protagonists who are responsible for it first. You give them a defense. You hear what they think they're trying to achieve, overturn or do. And that's the best way then to prosecute them. So I put Rupert Murdoch on stage, I put Dominic Cummings on television. And I don't think the best way to understand both their motivations and then their impact on our national life is just for me to use my political DNA and just shout and attack them. It's about every single play, or every single good play, I think, asks three questions of its character. What do they want? What's stopping them from getting it? So what do they try to do in order to get it?
- [10:09]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And do you get people criticizing you for that? Because I remember seeing Ink, which was about the rise of Rupert Murdoch, the perch touches of the sun the transformation of that newspaper into the hugely powerful media organ that it became. Now, I saw it in North London, right, I saw it in Islington, and I could see the discomfort around me. People thought they'd come to watch a liberal playwright say, rupert Murdoch, dreadful guy, awful. Look what he's done to the country. And you didn't do that. You actually presented them with the view that he'd taken on paternalism, that he had reformed the press, that in many ways he listened to working class opinion and accommodated it. Is there a bit of you who rather enjoy saying to people, I know you want to hate Dominic Cummings, if you're a remainer in your TV drama about Brexit, I'm going to make you understand him.
- [11:02]
James Graham (Playwright)
I don't think it's sort of deliberately mischievous or contrary, but I actually just think it's an incredibly necessary and important exercise to ask these questions that take us out of our comfort zone. It feels to me completely valid to go, the sun newspaper became the most popular paper in the English speaking world. Why? What instincts, good or bad, base or noble, does the tone of that newspaper appeal to the most amount of people, whether you like it or not? And within that conversation you do find yourself going, well, it is interesting, isn't it, that in some ways the working people in a time of the 60s that were quite reverential and quite serious, that their interests were being debased and actually they wanted to talk about football and they wanted to feel things about sex and pleasure and leisure and fun. And also the sense of humor, the sense of humor of the son, rather than taking everything so seriously, really appealed to exhausted working people who just sometimes want to laugh at it all. And he did that really successfully, of course. Then what you have to do is go, well, this is what he was fighting. But then, then you have to go, what did we lose? What did we lose in the coarsening of public debate? Or how much of that sense of humor was punching down on minorities or the weak rather than the strong? But I don't find it easy. And actually, there was a conversation that erupted online when it was discovered that Rupert Murdoch not only saw it once, but he came back and saw it a second time when we were in New York. And obviously the accusations leveled at me, particularly from the left, where if he's willing to come back and watch it a second time, you haven't done your job, James.
- [12:40]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And your answer to that is.
- [12:42]
James Graham (Playwright)
My answer to that is genuine humility. Go, have I not done my job? Is the balance right between prosecution and defence. But I would always counter with the philosophy that I would rather create a piece of theatre that has sun readers and Guardian readers, or in New York, Fox News watchers and NBC coming together into one single space and getting to hear their prejudices confirmed, but also challenged. And that might sound really romantic, but I'm really glad that Rupert felt like he got his point across, his character's arguments, but then he had to sit there for the second half and hear characters go, I think you've poisoned public discourse, which they do and they do.
- [13:25]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
They do very passionately in that play Ink.
- [13:28]
James Graham (Playwright)
But I do. I don't. I don't want to make it feel like I think I've nailed it. I think that balance is something. You're always wrestling with it and I do sometimes get quite upset about where I feel like I've let it down, or it's that 3 o' clock in the morning existential crisis you have, where you recognise the responsibility that you have by telling these stories to a mass popular audience. And you do wrestle with it, especially in these dark times.
- [13:48]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
My sense of why you wrestle with it, which we discussed when you came on this program, political thinking many years ago, is because you grew up amidst division, amidst political division, not just in your community, in the country, but in your own family. This was the miner strike in Nottinghamshire where there was this huge split, was there not, between those who supported the strikes, wanted to bring Margaret Thatcher down, save the pits, and those who wanted to save their jobs and their communities, but to carry on working?
- [14:19]
James Graham (Playwright)
Yes. I mean, that was obviously a national divide between the forces of free market Thatcherism and the post war consensus. But actually the strangeness, I think, of north Nottinghamshire and these villages which we now call the Red Wall, which where all attention seems to be focused and is where I grew up, it's a strange place because its identity is not fixed. Generally speaking, north of Nottinghamshire, in Yorkshire and beyond, they generally speaking, all went on strike. And in the city of Nottingham, in the heart of the Midlands, they broke away and formed a breakaway union. In these border villages where I grew up, which has a northern culture, but a Midlands postcode, they were often pre split down the middle. So in the same street, you would have people who went on strike and then people who went back to work within families, brothers who, 40 years on, and this is what my drama Sherwood is about, 40 years on, still don't speak to each other. So in one microcosm of a community, it was really split down the middle and that was an incredibly painful wound. And it persists to this day, that.
- [15:23]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
TV series on its third series, or about to have a third series later this year of Sherwood. Were you conscious that. You don't need to explain to my generation the split in the miners strike? We live through it. But there are a lot of people actually of your age, and certainly younger than you, for whom the miners strike must feel like ancient history and baffling history in some way.
- [15:43]
James Graham (Playwright)
Without a doubt. And I still believe. And this is bias, isn't it? Because I'm centering my experience of growing up in my town is the center of the universe. But I don't see how you cannot see that moment in 1984 and that the biggest industrial action in history as a turning point in our national life and our politics. It was a paradigm shift which we've not seen since. There was a crossroads of either continuing down a path of collectivism and post war consensus, or breaking that off into free market capitalism and then the breaking of the unions and everything else. And that's a simplification, but it was that turning point. And I think a younger generation should be fascinated by those pivot moments in history. So for me, again, the power and the power of drama and storytelling and entertainment in this space is always to bring what feels quite far away and unknowable, just closer to people on a human level, so that you can comprehend it and. Yeah. And witness the emotional impact of something as well.
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Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And there was an emotional impact within your family, your mother and your father divided. Yeah, they illustrated this divide.
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James Graham (Playwright)
Yeah, they had different politics. I mean, it probably wasn't as extreme as I look back on it now, but they. You know, I remember one election, I think it was the 92 election, where my mum voted one way and my dad voted another. And they seem to represent, yes, the split that was down my town between these two forces. And, you know, you're seeing it now.
- [17:07]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
John Major was running as a Conservative Prime Minister, just taking over from Margaret Thatcher against Neil Kinnick, who people generally thought was going to win, going to end the Tory year. So it wasn't just any election in which your parents disagreed. This was a real moment.
- [17:21]
James Graham (Playwright)
Yeah, it was a huge one. And then the consequence of that, of course, was the change of the Labour Party and what happened with new labour in 97.
- [17:28]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
But is that where you learned that people with very different politics can still love each other, can still respect each other, can listen.
- [17:40]
James Graham (Playwright)
Without question? And I feel like we all know the political climate we're living in at the moment, which is very Divided and antagonistic. And it does feel very personal that you don't just disagree with somebody's viewpoints, but you actually disagree with who they are and what they represent. And you take everything somebody says in bad faith, that they're trying to take something from you. Or the, you know, the difference between the metropolitan elite or the people I grew up with, and these categorizations are overly simplistic and it turns us all into very sort of indecent and binary people that reduce the simplicities. And I kind of loathe that. And I don't know how you fix that, but I would say this, wouldn't I? There is something about the natural empathy that is created in a space like a theatre, like a play, where different people. And that's why I cling onto the idea that it's a popular art form, that it's got to be people from different political traditions and backgrounds that come together into one space so they can see one story together and then talk about that in the bar afterwards.
- [18:41]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
Is it more than simply admiring people who understand each other? Is there a little bit of you, because of your upbringing that's scared of that sort of division? Unnerved, unsettled, frightened by it?
- [18:54]
James Graham (Playwright)
Yeah. And that's being borne out. It's being borne out in what feels like a very violent moment in our. In our culture. And also just doesn't lead to progress. It doesn't lead to complex and nuanced solutions to difficult problems. It leads to politics being treated as sport. And you have your colours and I have my colours. And I think a lot about what policies and how can culture play a part in this, in terms of how you would bridge the lack of social cohesion we have in this country at the moment, how you would bridge those divides. But you have to start off by having the will, and often very much. I don't even see the will anymore between two people who disagree with one another to come together.
- [19:33]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And as you mentioned, the area you grew up in, Nottinghamshire, now often referred to as the Red Wall. In a sense, it's the story of our national political life, isn't it?
- [19:42]
James Graham (Playwright)
Yeah.
- [19:42]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
One to Labour Heartland, then embraces Brexit. Not everybody, of course, but what was it, 58% leave in Nottinghamshire. Then many of these areas voted for Boris Johnson's Conservative Party. And now overwhelmingly turning towards reform. And indeed that recent defection is in that patch. It's in Newark. Robert Jenrick.
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James Graham (Playwright)
Yeah. Yes.
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Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
What's happened? What's going on? How do you explain it?
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James Graham (Playwright)
Yeah. And I caveat all of this by that. I wouldn't hope to be able to define my town as one homogenous block and understand it. And obviously I moved away and all my family and friends are still there, but I do feel a real sense of still belonging and love for my hometown and my neighbors. You're right. I mean, it was Lee Anderson, the first ever Reform mp. He's my MP in Ashfield. He seems to represent the new, the tone, character, style of that populist right.
- [20:35]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And he was just to remind people, labourer agent, Labour mp, Tory mp, and now Reform.
- [20:42]
James Graham (Playwright)
Yeah. The one thing that we can all obviously recognize and agree on, the feeling in my town is the feeling that so many people have, is the despair and anger and resentment that over the last 20 years, since the 2008 financial crash, very little has improved and many things have got worse. And we all know what those metrics are, whether it's wages, whether it's cost of living, but also our mental health, our happiness, our well being, our social cohesion. And key for me actually is the collapse of our social infrastructure and our public sphere. And I feel like people in these towns, when they look at their town centre, when they look at their high street, when they look at their neighbourhoods, a lot of these places are so run down now. And the actual physical infrastructure of the public realm where we used to gather together and see ourselves, much to your earlier questions about Garra Southgate, we used to see ourselves as belonging to something that we could be proud of, that we felt that was progressing and getting better, that gay was a part of our identity. Not all of that was just about looking back on our heritage. A lot of it was about a sense of the future and having hope and optimism about the future. It's really bad. Like, it's really depressing. Like a lot of these places, I'm not saying they're crap because they're not crap, but they are. They have been diminished. And you don't get that sense if you live in a university town or if you live in an urban environment in the southeast of England, something has to radically change. And when someone comes along and presents an answer to that problem, and I don't agree with that answer, which is the populist right answer, of going, it's there, look over there, it's their fault, it's migration. And if we just stop that, everything will be fixed. People need to embrace something because on the progressive left, they're not giving them that clear answer.
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Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
Aren't they doing something that Links with Dear England. They're giving what in many ways the man who's the philosopher of the new right, of Nigel Farage, of a reformed man called James Orr, an academic from Cambridge University, calls the politics of home. He said the other day, britain is a home, not an economic zone. It is a people and a place with a distinct character and history, not a set of confected values expressed in what he called the moral Esperanto of Davos man. Whether you agree with him or not, and you obviously don't agree with his politics, is he onto something? In a sense, has he spotted the same thing that you're talking about in Dear England, which is a craving of people to have a sense of what home means, what their national identity is?
- [23:18]
James Graham (Playwright)
Yes, I recognise a lot of that. Again, I probably wouldn't agree with the solutions, but I do think that fundamental. And again, the left probably needs to do some retrospection and examination of this. The idea that wanting to be proud of your community or wanting your neighbors and your street and your, your town centre to be something that you can use that word pride and esteem about, is not parochial, it's not small. It's the fundamental unit by which most of us experience life. And I think it's a really natural human instinct to want to feel pride in where you live. And that's not necessarily an unthinking patriotism where you want to wave a flag or perform these arcane ritual or unquestioningly celebrate the past and not. Not examine all of the injustices or wrong things that happened in your past. But people, it's a natural instinct to want to feel self esteem and actually on, on the progressive side of things. I remember seeing that so clearly in the city of culture in Hull. Hull is the city where I went to university has a lot of problems, its industry declined, it's got a lot of social problems, it's education league is at the bottom. And. And this moment came where for a year they became the city of culture. And there was a huge investment in making local art, local dance, local theatre, local comedy, local films. And it wasn't all about artificially pretending that you live somewhere amazing. But it did draw people back into the centre of those communities and they could see themselves next to each other in a collective. And honestly, there were metrics that measured self esteem went up, productivity went up, mental health improved. It's not a fix all, but there is something about being back in proximity with each other and in dialogue with your heritage and your community sense of identity that is not rocket science. It just makes you feel better about where you live.
- [25:14]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
Yeah. And it's wonderful to hear an optimistic view. I'm very conscious that we're having a conversation as two Englishmen here. If you're watching or listening to this in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, you'd say, hold on. It's perfectly possible to be proud of your national identity and progress it. Supporters of the Scottish National Party would claim that, supporters of Plaid Cymru would claim that, and both of them are in leading positions in opinion polls. There is something English, isn't there, about the fact that the progressive left seems either squeamish about pride in England or can't find the words.
- [25:47]
James Graham (Playwright)
Yeah, that's a huge question. I agree. What is it that we, the people on the left, kind of admire about Scottish nationalism? Because it feels progressive and inclusive and future facing, whereas something about English nationalism feels small, parochial, mean spirited, exclusive, obsessed with the past rather than forward looking? Those are all so reductive that obviously the generalizations that don't embrace how complex this are. But I guess that's what K. Starmer identified and tried to own. He tried to own that sense of Gareth Southgate's idea of a progressive, inclusive patriotism that celebrates diversity, that celebrates kindness and decency, and rejects, I guess, this binary that either you reject the pest entirely or you worship and celebrate and don't question it.
- [26:40]
Podcast Narrator (Charles Schwab)
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- [27:41]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
You in the past have said, and again, just stressing you're not endorsing him or his views, that Nigel Farage is quite an impressive storyteller. Yeah, Keir Starmer clearly isn't. Why?
- [27:54]
James Graham (Playwright)
I mean, I guess it feels I actually sat with him when he watched Dear England. He came to see the play. And I could tell, I don't say this is about my writing. I could tell he was more inspired by Gareth Southgate than he was necessarily by me in my play. But, you know, Gareth used the words to his team and to his players. England needs a new story and we're going to write it and it's going to take time. And he just recognized that one of the reasons why these players, when they put on this shirt and for some reason before, worse than any other nation in the world, at the singular act of scoring a penalty, that there was something more going on.
- [28:33]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
It was in that old phrase, a monkey on their back.
- [28:35]
James Graham (Playwright)
Indeed. And all this history actually wasn't helping them because they couldn't understand it.
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Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And do you think Keir Starmer was inspired? Maybe too strong a word, but he was sort of mentally taking notes? Yes, that's the story I need to tell.
- [28:47]
James Graham (Playwright)
Without a doubt. You can see it in the key phrase he went into the election with, which was a decade of national renewal. So he used the word decade, which is a long term project. This is going to take time. We're not going to fix it in the first tournament. It's going to be a long term struggle and renewal. We need to reset. We need to resurrect something of ourselves and press the reset button. I guess the problem is, and I actually really believe this was maybe going to be the case, that what the country wanted was that kind of managerial, technocratic approach to incremental change. As long as we can incrementally, over the next five years, improve all the metrics of our national life, make sure that waiting lists go down and productivity goes up, that growth goes up and crime goes down, as long as we could do that in a calm and assured way, that will be enough. And actually it's not enough because people, one, aren't feeling the benefits and don't believe the benefits when you tell them that they're happening. And two, unless you can wrap that around a really clear narrative so that every one of us knows whereabouts we are in the story of the five act structure and what the national plan is. And in my world, we call it the elevator pitch. If I can't describe to you what my story is in two sentences, then I don't know my story.
- [30:04]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
Could you write those two sentences?
- [30:05]
James Graham (Playwright)
I couldn't. I don't think I could necessarily define for you in clear language yet.
- [30:12]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
But if he's James, you know, or.
- [30:14]
James Graham (Playwright)
If he asked me to help him, I Would you think what the two.
- [30:16]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
Sentences might be for Labour to convince people that they had a national story?
- [30:22]
James Graham (Playwright)
I mean, what I really like about certain elements of their project is they're kind of. They're kind of leaning into that Clement Attlee Esque 1945 Spirit of Coming out of a crisis and together as a nation, as one, marching forward into building a new Britain. And that includes physically building so new towns and new places, which I really like, whether it's British energy or renationalizing the trains, a sense of returning to a collective spirit that speaks to some social democratic romance that we have about Attlee and Wilson and those people. But look, I just waffled on for like 20 uninspiring seconds. You didn't quite. Your two sentences, sorry, take the call.
- [31:07]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
If he wants to call you. Kia, if you're watching, if you're listening.
- [31:10]
James Graham (Playwright)
But actually, I also struggle with that as well, because I reject the modern politics of reductive slogans. Take back control, make America greater these reduce. And reduce our politics to these simplicities. So it's not about pretending that everything can be solved with a slogan, but it is about going, here is the project and we can all be a part of it and here's how we're going to measure it over the next five, ten years.
- [31:35]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
Do you see great storytellers on the left of politics?
- [31:38]
James Graham (Playwright)
I mean, some are better messengers, aren't they? Some act better like human beings when they're on sofas like this. And don't revert to those awful political interview platitudes, no matter what question you ask me. I just go, look, I think I've been very clear from the beginning that what people up and down the country want to hear is how we're getting on with the job. And, like, you're worryingly good at this. Thank you. Some Labour ministers are pretty good at making the talking points sound like they're human beings.
- [32:09]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
You've already said that you're sort of uncomfortable with the way politics have gone. And I was struck when I was preparing for this interview, that the first James Graham play I saw, which I think was your first big national hit, was at the National Theatre in London, this House, which was a portrayal of the battles in Parliament, which is no doubt why I was there behind the scenes as James Callaghan's government was fighting for survival and eventually fell and began the Thatcher era. And as I thought about this interview, I thought, so much has changed since that play was on in 2012, when we were at a Moment of, in many ways, peak national pride, won't we? I mean, the Olympic Games in London, probably more to people close to London than I suspect people listening or watching in other parts of the country did feel like a moment that we could all share. Here's a small question for you. What's gone wrong?
- [33:07]
James Graham (Playwright)
A few things, clearly. I mean, I've always believed that something went wrong in 2008 that didn't reset, and we're still plodding through and limping on from that moment. It's completely reductive and simplistic to say this, but historically, throughout the 20th century, eras lasted about 25, 30 years, and there was always a reset or a shift, whether that was the end of the Second World War, whether that was the fall of the Berlin Wall, There was a paradigm shift and the old contract was broken and a new idea emerged as a way of moving forward and advancing and progressing. And we all knew what that was. Then almost, you know, on timing, something collapsed in the financial crisis of 2008 and the great Recession. But they didn't feel like there was that ideological, political, economical reset moment. And we are still limping on with whatever you want to call it, late capitalism and people's lives haven't improved and nothing has shifted. And it feels the life we're living through now feels defined by paralysis, stagnation, and feeling stuck. And that naturally creates frustration, resentment, bitterness, and a pull towards the extremes tied in with that. The platforms and the technology and the instruments that we use to make sense of the world are by definition not designed around social cohesion and unity. They are models that are designed around inflaming tension and putting us into digital silos and fragmenting us around different communities other than the physical ones that we live in. Our community now might be a digital one that has got as many people in it in the deep south of America or in Russia than it does on our own street. And we are atomized and alienated in our lives around our often our devices and our screens, which all all makes it much, much, much, much harder for any project, any mission, any national story which the Olympics was to spread itself across all of us. And all of us feel a part of it and included in.
- [35:22]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
Now, you're a playwright. You're someone whose job is to make us think, not to necessarily come up with solutions. But when you describe that, there'll be people saying yes, and they may be despairing, do you despair or do you have secretly, even though you're not a politician? No, I have a whole series of things I know could make this better. I know what I want to do.
- [35:41]
James Graham (Playwright)
I do despair, I think probably. The last time we spoke, I declared myself as, like, an unapologetic optimist or something, which I actually frequently got some pushback for in the theater world. I was quite optimistic about our, generally speaking, our politicians and our public life and our institutions. This house, which you mentioned, was a look at the absurdities of our rituals and systems in Parliament and its people, but ultimately was, oddly, a kind of hopeful look at the decency of people. And that actually ended. The end of this house is about a Conservative whip doing something really honorable and noble and decent. That was the place I was in at the time, and that has taken a real battering. But what I am optimistic about, always, and this is stupidly sentimental, it will always be people and the human spirit. And I get all that when I go back to my hometown and I see the incredible people working in the charity sector, or I see my teachers at my local school, or I see the goodness in people when they're actually reminded that they're good and they get together in one space and are decent and caring, rather than the way we conduct ourselves and behave online.
- [36:49]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
But just so people know, do you have your list of things you wish government would do, but you'd rather not share them? That's fine. You're a playwright. You don't need to tell us what all your political views are. Or, in truth, do you describe this in your place? Because, you know, it's a hellishly difficult job. You don't actually have this great agenda of solutions.
- [37:08]
James Graham (Playwright)
Well, on the playwriting front, that's. Again, I think the rule for me is as long as people are asking sincerely the question honestly and in good faith, then you might arrive at an honest and good answer. And I don't always feel like those questions are being asked honestly and in good faith. I think that was one of the fundamental problems of the Brexit referendum. There were lots of problems to that referendum, but if you go back to it, at its core it was a question. It was the wrong question, asked dishonestly and answered badly. We pretended it was a question about this, but actually it was to solve some party managerial problems. And actually it was answered badly because the people answering it didn't even have control of the outcome and agency in that. And I think there's something. If we just ask the questions honestly and better, that we would arrive at a different solution. And specifically, I'm obsessed at the moment a bit what you said about the unit of our lives being home, just place, community. That's an obvious thing to say, but given so many of the levers and the buttons we used to be able to push as politicians or in the state aren't connected anymore and they're not arriving at any outcomes, and given the impossibility, it feels of global forces and how we're buffeted from side to side by things we can't control, instead of looking at, at big macro things, I would almost reverse it and I'd go micro, I'd go, what can we control? What if, for example, we took two towns in the UK and did what we would normally do with a city of culture? We have tried to create a template and a model for regeneration and renovation and renewal just in these couple of towns and then actually maybe pick a new town and go, how are we going to build this, design this, organize this unit of existence around certain values and storytelling and ideas? Is evidence based and based on speaking to people and just start small, like go, how would I revive Plymouth and have a national conversation about that and get all local stakeholders involved and over a 5, 10 year period apply a specific model, have everybody included in it and see what works and what doesn't work?
- [39:08]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
James Graham, Mayor of Plymouth I can see it now. Yeah, I want to end just by talking about your world and mine and to what extent we can have in our different worlds. I suspect the influence we probably both wish we could have. Let's start with your world. You grew up in an era where drama really could set the national agenda. I mean, you're too young for play for the day, but it was still a sense that millions would come together to watch a TV drama. Now they do for traitors, they do for Strictly. You get good audiences for Sherwood, you'll hope for Dear England. But do you worry that those shared national moments of conversation have gone as. People want distraction, they don't really want to think about how do we make the world a better place. They just want to be in a different world entirely. In fact, they want quite a lot of nostalgia as well.
- [39:58]
James Graham (Playwright)
Yeah, they want nostalgia, they want distraction, they want short form rather than long form. They don't want to invest in something long like a novel or an eight part television series. The rhythm of life now is flicking your phone and seeing 30 second clips. Not everybody, not always ways, but that the rhythm of that is changing. And I do worry about that. There are so many benefits to the breaking up of that singular model of you must watch this channel at this Time and this news organization will give you these messages. It's great. The potential of breaking up that. So it could be more egalitarian and a diverse range of views and grassroots ownership of the media and information channels. Anyone can have a YouTube channel, anyone has a social media platform in reality. What that's creating, of course, is, as we've said, a fragmented society where we don't all see the world and the country and its problems and solutions through the same frame. And there is something really, really important on a human level, on a soulful level, on a spiritual level, about all of us experiencing the same thing at the same time. And that's why it's amazing to me that still watching traitors and millions and million people, including young people, want to get together. I've got loads of young friends who get together in some way, someone's flat or house and watch it in the real time because they want to feel like they're part of a group again. Back to the Gareth Southgate thing. It's not a parochial, small minded, populist, right wing thing to want to belong and feel pride, engagement and enrichment from that. So drama to me has its. You know, that's why theatre is still powerful because you have to watch it together in a physical proximity and we need to, we need to, you know, public service broadcasting has a role in that and that's why I would always fight for it to survive outside of the model of the new streamers and of distraction.
- [41:49]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
It is community. May save this organisation, may save BBC.
- [41:53]
James Graham (Playwright)
Absolutely, yeah.
- [41:54]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
And finally this. You seem to me to have a bit of a fascination with the long form interview. You've written more than one piece about it.
- [42:02]
James Graham (Playwright)
It.
- [42:03]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
I went to see Best of Enemies at the National Theater, which was about an extraordinary series of television debates in the United States. You dramatized Margaret Thatcher's interview with Brian Walden. You did for a Channel 4 drama as well. There's a sense that this long conversations about politics are doomed by the kind of short clip on social media. Or am I being too pessimistic?
- [42:29]
James Graham (Playwright)
It feels like they're doomed. But what but sat here with you right now, what's been really encouraging and exciting is the explosion of podcasts and of deep dives. People actually do really like to go deep into issues and that is it being proven to be a commercially successful model. So I don't think it's. I don't think it's doomed in the sense that people don't have an appetite or a desire for the illumination, the natural illumination that comes out of. Of unpicking something carefully over time, rather than these bursts of meaningless, relentless information. But we have to just remind ourselves of that. We have to celebrate that. And again, there is a reason for me why I take hope in the fact that for 2000 years, theatre has survived. You wouldn't think it in the age when you can watch a movie on your phone, but that appetite for theatre is not going away and in many ways is getting more popular because people do want to invest in something more meaningful than just a Tweet or a YouTube clip. And we should take hope in that. It's in our DNA, it's in our nature, but it is how we're probably going to survive the crisis.
- [43:36]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
James Grahams, you can't help yourself. You've ended on a note of optimism.
- [43:40]
James Graham (Playwright)
Which sounds very naive, which is good.
- [43:41]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
No, that's what we want. Thank you so much for joining me on Political.
- [43:44]
James Graham (Playwright)
Thank you. Cheers.
- [43:50]
Interviewer (BBC Political Thinking Host)
Many years ago, I remember getting a message from a young man called James Graham. I'd seen one of his plays, but otherwise knew very little about him. He asked whether he could have the transcript of all the interviews I'd done for a TV documentary about the formation of the coalition. James immersed himself in the real life stories of real people involved in those dramas. But he did it because he wanted to turn it into something else, a drama, a TV play, in which he was inviting us to listen to arguments we might have disagreed with and might still, and to understand, to empathise with people we might even despise. Thanks for listening to this episode of Political Thinking. The producers were Daniel Kramer and Flora Murray. The editor is Giles Edwards. There are hundreds of previous conversations like this on BBC Sounds, so do go back and have a listen. Also there on BBC Sounds, you'll find my colleague Amal Rajan's podcast radical. A few months back, he interviewed a man called Jacob Dunn, who was the inspiration behind another of James Graham's play, Punch Dunn, through a single punch that killed another man 15 years ago. The play is the play of real life, a story of redemption.
- [45:19]
Naomi Alderman (Human Intelligence Host)
How does someone invent a political theory that reshapes the map of the world? How do you get to a scientific breakthrough that saves thousands of lives? Or create works of art that stand the test of time? How have brilliant thinkers through history done their best thinking? And what can we learn from them? From BBC Radio 4, it's the second series of Human Intelligence. With me, Naomi Alderman. From Karl Marx to Marie Curie, from Emily Bronte to Leonardo da Vinci, how did those exceptional minds do their work. And are there ways of thinking we can emulate today? To find out, listen to human intelligence on BBC Sounds.
- [46:03]
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