SPOILER ALERT – THIS
ASSUMES YOU HAVE WATCHED THE END OF BORGEN SERIES 2 AND LINCOLN (OR AT LEAST
KNOW YOUR HISTORY)
It’s been a great
month for those of us who like our dramas political and have been wondering why
we never saw Matt Santos’s first term in full technicolour. But now Borgen has ended – until next year
- and there will be no Lincoln Part 2,
it seems like a good time to reflect on what these two entertainments tell us
about politics.
Intriguingly, for Coalition Britain, a central theme has
been stitching together coalitions – with the noble Mr Lincoln resorting to
bringing out the US version of the payroll vote – by offering federal jobs to
lame duck Democrats to vote through the 13th amendment – and PM
Nyborg having to resort to smear tactics to get the Greens on board with her
grand “Common Future” – and exiting a potential rival to Brussels (in the best
titled episode of the series). In both,
we are asked to admire politicians who do the wrong thing to achieve a bigger
objective. But we also see the care and
attention that is needed to assemble and keep coalitions going.
And a key theme of both is the problems politicians have in
reconciling political office with home life.
The scenes between Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln make the Borgen domestics
look restrained – at the very least until Birgitte’s last screaming match. In both the spouses fail the Denis Thatcher
test. But most poignant in both is the
impact on the children. Interestingly
the littler ones cope better – whether Tad or Magnus, while it is the older
child who suffers. And the compromise
for both politicians is that they apply different rules to their children – Abe
wanting Robert not to enlist because of what his being killed would do to the
mother, Birgitte going private to jump the waiting list to get Laura into
psychiatric treatment (do they really have 50 week waiting lists n Denmark?!).
The biggest shock is just how different politics looks in
the two. One hundred and fifty years
(and the Atlantic) separate Lincoln and Borgen.
While the House in Lincoln is split on abolition of slavery, it is
vehement that it will not concede votes to “negroes” – but even clearer that
votes for women would be absolutely beyond the pale. The set up in the Danish Parliament looks
very similar – big seats, in a semi-circle with a speaker in the middle. But the composition of the two legislatures
is very different. In 1865, it is white
men with beards. In 2012 (fictional) Denmark it is a rainbow parliament with
prominent women and Muslims. The House
of Commons looks a bit too dangerously near the Lincoln end of the spectrum
(except for the beards).
But there is a heartening message from both. Politics is a trade for honourable
people. They can manage to survive the
chaotic home life (even if not an unfortunate theatre trip). They can make change happen. But one is fiction. One is a story over a century old. Neither is a story about British
politics. The most recent British
political film showed our only woman prime minister struggling with Alzheimers,
not wowing Parliament and trouncing the opposition, and left people none the
wiser about what she actually did. We still
get the hopelessness of Yes Prime Minister and the venality of the Thick of It
– and then wonder why people disengage from politics.
Which raises a question.
Can we only drop our cynicism about politics and politicians if we are
looking at the “ government” of another country?
