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| House of Cards creator Michael Dobbs: ‘David Cameron will never be a great politician’ | House of Cards creator Michael Dobbs: ‘David Cameron will never be a great politician’ |
| (about 17 hours later) | |
| If House of Cards has taught us anything, it’s that politics isn’t fun. Frank Underwood might be the consummate politician, but he leads a bleak existence. His is a desperate, dirty game, where you stab your friends in the back one minute, and embark on awkward soliloquies about the merits of the PlayStation Vita the next. Thankfully, it’s all fiction. Real-life politics isn’t anything like so cut-throat. But Michael Dobbs says it should be. | If House of Cards has taught us anything, it’s that politics isn’t fun. Frank Underwood might be the consummate politician, but he leads a bleak existence. His is a desperate, dirty game, where you stab your friends in the back one minute, and embark on awkward soliloquies about the merits of the PlayStation Vita the next. Thankfully, it’s all fiction. Real-life politics isn’t anything like so cut-throat. But Michael Dobbs says it should be. |
| To hear him – the man who wrote the House of Cards novels, after gaining a reputation as a “baby-faced assassin” while serving as Margaret Thatcher’s chief of staff – describe British politics now is to listen to a man who yearns for the arrival of a real-world Frank Underwood. | To hear him – the man who wrote the House of Cards novels, after gaining a reputation as a “baby-faced assassin” while serving as Margaret Thatcher’s chief of staff – describe British politics now is to listen to a man who yearns for the arrival of a real-world Frank Underwood. |
| Related: Netflix renews House of Cards for fourth season | |
| “You have to lie and screw other people to succeed,” Dobbs said last week, at an event to promote the DVD release of season three. “Politics isn’t about honesty and openness. It’s about getting things done. Kill or be killed is ingrained in you right from the start. To be a decent politician, you first have to win an election. And to win an election, you have to beat another man into the ground.” | “You have to lie and screw other people to succeed,” Dobbs said last week, at an event to promote the DVD release of season three. “Politics isn’t about honesty and openness. It’s about getting things done. Kill or be killed is ingrained in you right from the start. To be a decent politician, you first have to win an election. And to win an election, you have to beat another man into the ground.” |
| A great political leader – he names Thatcher, Churchill and Blair as examples, although you sense he’s picturing Underwood and his own creation Francis Urquhart – gets things done. But great political leaders are thin on the ground now. They’ve been scared off by the scrutiny of the modern day. A great leader is forged by the mistakes they’ve made in the past, he says, and Twitter and the 24-hour news cycle have made us too intolerant to let that happen. One tiny slip and we’d be demanding their resignation. | A great political leader – he names Thatcher, Churchill and Blair as examples, although you sense he’s picturing Underwood and his own creation Francis Urquhart – gets things done. But great political leaders are thin on the ground now. They’ve been scared off by the scrutiny of the modern day. A great leader is forged by the mistakes they’ve made in the past, he says, and Twitter and the 24-hour news cycle have made us too intolerant to let that happen. One tiny slip and we’d be demanding their resignation. |
| This is why things have become so tame. Dobbs blames the media’s thirst for scalps, and the Freedom of Information Act. “There’s almost no such thing as a secret any more,” he laments. “It gets in the way. There are a lot more barriers that we’re creating for politicians. They’re all there for the public good, but it’s not to say that we’re going to get a better government. That is the great paradox. What do we want? A good, effective government, or for our politicians to be choirboys?” | This is why things have become so tame. Dobbs blames the media’s thirst for scalps, and the Freedom of Information Act. “There’s almost no such thing as a secret any more,” he laments. “It gets in the way. There are a lot more barriers that we’re creating for politicians. They’re all there for the public good, but it’s not to say that we’re going to get a better government. That is the great paradox. What do we want? A good, effective government, or for our politicians to be choirboys?” |
| He goes on: “Great leaders are uncomfortable to be around. To really change things, a leader has to be focused to the absolute detriment of everything else. Politics has to consume you to the point that you can never let it go. Blair couldn’t. Nor could Thatcher. Or Churchill.” Power, according to Dobbs, is something to be clung on to “until they’re slamming your coffin lid down on your fingernails”. | He goes on: “Great leaders are uncomfortable to be around. To really change things, a leader has to be focused to the absolute detriment of everything else. Politics has to consume you to the point that you can never let it go. Blair couldn’t. Nor could Thatcher. Or Churchill.” Power, according to Dobbs, is something to be clung on to “until they’re slamming your coffin lid down on your fingernails”. |
| Which brings us to our present prime minister, a man who represents the very antithesis of the Dobbsian leadership ideal. “For David Cameron to want to bow out after a second term might make him a decent person,” he says, “but he’ll never be a great politician.” | Which brings us to our present prime minister, a man who represents the very antithesis of the Dobbsian leadership ideal. “For David Cameron to want to bow out after a second term might make him a decent person,” he says, “but he’ll never be a great politician.” |
| A decent person? Coming from the man who brought us Underwood and Urquhart, it’s difficult to imagine a greater insult. | A decent person? Coming from the man who brought us Underwood and Urquhart, it’s difficult to imagine a greater insult. |