Is Liam Bentley still in this universe...
The Thick of It is a British comedy television series that satirises the inner workings of the British Transition. Written and directed by Armando Iannucci, it was first broadcast for two short series on BBC Four in 2005. It had a small cast focusing on a government minister, his advisers and their military attache. The cast was expanded for two hour-long specials to coincide with Britain's accession to the EU in 2007. This saw new characters forming the opposition party added to the cast. These characters continued when the show switched channels to BBC Two for its third series in 2009. A fourth series was broadcast in 2012, with the last episode transmitted on 27 October 2012.
The series highlights the struggles between politicians, the military and civil servants. The political parties involved are never mentioned by name, and in series 1 and 2 most policies discussed are generic. When Peter Mannion and his team are introduced the context makes clear that the government party is the SDP and Mannion's party is National. This continues through series 3 and series 4. Former civil servant Martin Sixsmith was an adviser to the writing team, adding to the realism of some scenes. The series became well known for its profanity and for story-lines which have mirrored real-life policies.
The action centers on the fictional Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship ("DoSAC). Thus it acts as a "super department" overseeing many others, with some similarities to the Cabinet Office. This concept enables different political themes to be dealt with in the programme.
Hugh Abbot, played by Chris Langham, is a blundering minister under the watchful eye of Lt Col Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), the military's aggressive "enforcer". The programme also features James Smith, Chris Addison and Joanna Scanlan.
A feature film spin-off, In the Loop, was released in the UK on 17 April 2010, parodying Britain's withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the US reaction. A pilot for a U.S. remake of the show was not successful, but Iannucci was invited to create Veep for HBO. Veep had a very similar tone and political issues, with the involvement of some The Thick of It writers and production members.
"A Very British Transition" - A Post-Junta Britain TL
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Authors note: I have no idea how to write scripts but if any of you lovely readers know how and want to write a scene for ITTL Thick of It I would love to see it!
Taken from ‘Wikipedia’:
Series One:
Episode One: When the Junta falls, the new Prime Minister appoints Hugh Abbott and his team to the department of Social Affairs. Hoping to upstage the militant remnants in his department, he calls a press conference, but after his 'Snooper Squad' idea is killed, the Minister has forty minutes to come up with a new policy.
Episode Two: The PM is concerned that the Minister is not keeping in touch with the man or woman on the street and orders him to sort out his policy on Eastenders. In an attempt to formulate a popular new strategy, Hugh gets a very focused focus group in to tell him which one of two contradictory policies to go for.
Episode Three: The Prime Minister thinks Hugh's empty flat in London could pose a problem for the government in containing the military’s influence over an upcoming Housing Reform. Meanwhile, Hugh develops a dislike for his media-savvy junior minister Dan Miller and Malcolm explains the art of a "good resignation".
Series Two:
Episode One: At a ministerial visit to a factory, Hugh is accosted by a member of the public. With Terri away on compassionate leave, only Malcolm can help bury the story, but the military are trying to persuade him not to. Meanwhile, Ollie is dating an opposition advisor and hastily seconded to Downing Street to "ring his girlfriend".
Episode Two: There's a cabinet reshuffle in the offing and the new chief of the military Julius Nicholson is making trouble. Robyn Murdoch struggles to cover Terri's duties, and is removed from the Prime Minister's morning meetings.
Episode Three: Hugh attempts to convince the PM not to go ahead with a bill that would reduce the role of the military after Malcolm threatens to remove him as Minister. He also accidentally sends an eight-year-old girl an expletive-laden email, intended for Glenn, and Terri faces the blame.
Specials 1- EU Turns: Hugh Abbot is threatened by Malcolm to vote down any negotiations bill with the EU or be forcibly removed from his position. A disastrous Newsnight interview in which Hugh has not be alerted on the party’s stance on the Euro, an opposition "week at the coalface" and an impending coup leave the PM with no choice but to join the EU six months early.
Specials 2- Chain of Command: When Hugh makes an interview that is seen as anti-military, he and his team have one night to avoid a coup and to save Britain’s membership in the EU.
Series Three: (Episodes 1-5 are more or less the same)
Episode Six: Whilst the PM is away on a world tour, the military begin to consider Nicola as a potential stalking horse challenger to party leadership, forcing Malcolm to put aside his duties and intervene.
Episode Seven: DoSAC are attempting to launch a programme to reduce the role of the military in government, while Malcolm is absent, supposedly on holiday – but everyone knows that Malcolm does not take holidays.
Episode Eight: Malcolm finds himself running out of both options and friends as a coup looms, until he finds help being offered from an unlikely quarter.
Series Four:
Episode One: Peter Mannion is taking charge at the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship as part of a coalition government. However, he must also work with junior minister Fergus Williams, an arrangement neither man is enjoying. As the series begins, Fergus excitedly prepares to launch his new digital education initiative "I Call App Britain", until Malcolm Tucker announces technophobe Peter is going to be the spokesman for it instead.
Episode Two: Leader of the Opposition Nicola Murray finds herself facing a new set of pressures following her party's election defeat, including being harassed by a man in an unusual costume. However, her problems mount when journalists get a glimpse of some embarrassing meeting notes – and she starts to worry about how close fellow shadow cabinet member Dan Miller is getting to media strategist Stewart Pearson.
Episode Three: Stewart Pearson takes Nicola Murray to a "Thought Camp" at a remote country mansion. While Peter’s launching a new policy, Fergus invites an attractive female economist into the department to discuss her idea about creating a taxpayer-funded community bank. However, when NHS housing campaigner "Mr Tickle" commits suicide, Fergus is forced to make a rash decision, Malcolm and Peter finds themselves on a slippery slope and Nicola is forced to avoid journalists by locking herself in a cupboard.
Episode Four: Stewart's patience with Nicola Murray's leadership is at an end. As Nicola is stuck on a train on the way to Bradford with a crew from Sky News, and with Ollie in hospital recovering from an appendix removal, Stewart hatches a plan with Ollie, the backbench MP Hugh Abbot and Dan Miller to double cross Nicola, and force her to resign.
Episode Six: The unravelling of the key-worker housing sell-off policy forces both Nicola Murray and Peter Mannion onto the defensive, and thus begins a race for the moral high ground. But the more they try to spin the story, the bigger the scandal becomes.
Episode Seven: In an hour-long special, the coalition government, the civil service staff of DoSAC, the military and the opposition find themselves under the scrutiny of the Lord Justice Goolding Inquiry into Mr Tickel's death and the practice of leaking in politics.
Episode Eight: The Home Office has cut police numbers, created a huge backlog of arrest paperwork, and managed to blame DoSAC for the enormous queues at police stations. At Stewart's suggestion, Dan Miller gets sent on a fact-finding mission to the local cop-shop to press the flesh, in the belief that it will make the Government look unresponsive. Meanwhile Malcolm is finally removed from his post by the military for his role in the Tickle Scandal and is replaced by Mary Drake.
I think you mean incredibly unpopular right?
From the Scottish nationalist perspective, the UK joining the Euro as well as the EU is amazing. Not only does it eliminate any potential border problems that might result from independence, it completely eliminates the currency question.
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Outstanding!
I think I got the size of his head a bit off....
Love the Thick of IT these sound hilarious especially the idea of Malcolm Tucker as part of the military. The thought is both hilarious and terrifying
This goddamn British Junta made us Eastern Europeans join the EU three years late! Assholes.
Speaking of which, is every country of the 10 that joined the EU in 2004 in OTL are going to join in 2007 in this timeline along with Britain, or did some countries get pushed back further than others?
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I would be interested to learn more about the state of the British economy TTL. The TL seems to imply that Britain is poorer and less developed than OTL, but it is quite possible that the gap between it and the rest of Europe isn't as large as we may think. The presence of the junta means that trade union militancy can be curbed a lot earlier TTL. This means no 3 days week, no miners strike and nationalised industries developing very differently to OTL. It could very well be that structural reforms take place under the junta and that they adopt economic policies of state capitalism and ordoliberalism similar to OTL South Korea.
I expect the junta to be very keen on energy independence which means that the fate of the coal industry could be completely different to OTL. There may have been more investments in superpits to drive up productivity, new mines may even have been opened in Nottinghamshire.
The development of North Sea oil may also be very different, the junta may even have set-up a Norwegian style oil fund TTL.
As harsh as it sounds, the junta is an opportunity to revamp the British economy to be more focused on long-term investment, to have the City and industry working more closely together and to significantly upgrade British infrastructure as NIMBYism can be dealt with harshly.
The thread mentioned a company called "British Energy" which alludes to a significantly different development of the electricity sector under the junta with the British electricity restructured along similar lines to British Gas through vertical integration. This could mean in a nutshell:
- No regional electricity boards, so one electricity price for the entire country as opposed to OTL different prices.
- Full integration of the Scottish grid with the English grid and further developments of hydroelectricity in the Highlands for pumped storage.
- More economies of scales and more integration of network infrastructure.
- A monopoly which like OTL French EDF can't be privatised, but still corporatized and made to focus on efficiency.
- More investment in nuclear energy compared to OTL.
Btw said British Energy won't be loss-making, in fact it will be cash making machine as its a monopoly! If it stays intact, it will start buying off other energy companies all over Europe like EDF did OTL.
It will be in the junta best interest to keep the populace quiet with strong economic growth, so British economy may be somewhat stronger than OTL in certain sectors. The City mat not be OTL's casino but more industry could remain in the North. GEC and ICI may survive as major multinationals. The UK in the eurozone means that the City can be steered to become the bloc's financial capital over a few decades.
I expect the junta to be very keen on energy independence which means that the fate of the coal industry could be completely different to OTL. There may have been more investments in superpits to drive up productivity, new mines may even have been opened in Nottinghamshire.
The development of North Sea oil may also be very different, the junta may even have set-up a Norwegian style oil fund TTL.
As harsh as it sounds, the junta is an opportunity to revamp the British economy to be more focused on long-term investment, to have the City and industry working more closely together and to significantly upgrade British infrastructure as NIMBYism can be dealt with harshly.
The thread mentioned a company called "British Energy" which alludes to a significantly different development of the electricity sector under the junta with the British electricity restructured along similar lines to British Gas through vertical integration. This could mean in a nutshell:
- No regional electricity boards, so one electricity price for the entire country as opposed to OTL different prices.
- Full integration of the Scottish grid with the English grid and further developments of hydroelectricity in the Highlands for pumped storage.
- More economies of scales and more integration of network infrastructure.
- A monopoly which like OTL French EDF can't be privatised, but still corporatized and made to focus on efficiency.
- More investment in nuclear energy compared to OTL.
Btw said British Energy won't be loss-making, in fact it will be cash making machine as its a monopoly! If it stays intact, it will start buying off other energy companies all over Europe like EDF did OTL.
It will be in the junta best interest to keep the populace quiet with strong economic growth, so British economy may be somewhat stronger than OTL in certain sectors. The City mat not be OTL's casino but more industry could remain in the North. GEC and ICI may survive as major multinationals. The UK in the eurozone means that the City can be steered to become the bloc's financial capital over a few decades.
Good to see Britain fast-tracked into joining the EU. If political leaders play their card rights and focus on increasing the economic strength of the country, Britain could quickly gain enough clout to become a dominant nation in the bloc.
So after the coup Britain's accession talks with the EU collapsed for obvious reasons, this lead to a knock-on on affect of Ireland and Denmark getting cold feet and their accession collapsing. This was generally humiliating for the EU, and led to a more inward looking EU with slower integration.
Most of the 2007 Eastern European enlargement will be joining in 2007 with the UK, however more controversial countries like the Baltics will be joining later due to worries about Russia.
Britain isn't as underdeveloped as former iron curtain states but it is definitely weaker than OTL, its more economically in line with some of the larger South European economies like Italy and Spain. However you are right in some ways Britain is more developed that OTL due to things you listed like less union militancy, generally the British economy is a lot more mixed, rather than being entirely services like it is OTL.
The energy industry did last a lot longer but obviously as the world globalised Britain was unable to keep up with places like Russia, China and India so the coal industry has declined, but it was a lot less sudden and traumatic than OTL.
It is true the Junta did set up an oil fund.
Infrastructure is mixed, railways are a lot more prevalent as the Junta considered them strategically important, especially between major cities. But rural infrastructure is a lot worse as the Junta didn't see the need to invest, so there's an even larger urban/rural divide than OTL.
British Energy is an incredibly powerful company yes, a close comparison would be EDF and a lot of the points you made would hold true.
Overall there are some economic upsides to the Junta such as being less dependent on the City and service industry, but the lack of innovation and international isolation has left Britain's economy in a weaker state. But many in the Government hope that once Britain opens up to the EU it will see a massive economic bounce.
Well, Denmark would still be an EFTA member (so that would help cushion any shocks to not being an EEC member), yet Ireland was not IOTL. Could Ireland seek out EFTA membership instead ITTL, and then join the majority of EFTA states in negotiating the European Economic Area with the EEC > EU? (Obviously Britain, despite being an EFTA member state - unless it got kicked out of that, too - and a founding member at that, would probably want to stay out since it might complicate the junta's foreign/economic policy, but that could change as part of a liberalization strategy which makes later EU accession possible.)
I think it is explicitly said that the EU has 14 members, which is perfectly all pre-2004 members sans the UK, so from what I understand everyone joined, just at a later date.
Chapter 12: Mi Casa es tu Casa
British state housing needed modernising
“The Junta regime conceptualized housing as a national pride builder and evasion. Three main narratives have been tied to Mountbattenist housing; which are social community ties, evasion and local identity. Though, the amount and relevance of sports facilities in the city could be seen as a material legacy of the Junta regime. The housing policy of Mountbattenism developed a housing market inscribed in authoritarianism for the poor and market structures for the rich. Hill-Norton's later housing policies are the main base of the current housing market structure in Britain. These are characterized by a complex conglomerate of builders, promoters and financial institutions. The building companies developed under the Junta are the main elements of these conglomerates.” - Mountbatten’s urban legacy, Lecture by Liliana Figueras, Wageningen University (2014)
If you controlled the homes you controlled the people, at least that was the thinking of the British Junta. Under the Mounbatten administration public housing was kept strictly controlled at a national level. Whilst there was a considerable amount of privately owned housing, especially among the upper and middle classes, home ownership in Britain was much lower than in places like the states, with a third of Brits living in state housing. State houses were often used as a way of enforcing loyalty by the Junta, and under more unscrupulous officers, a form of money laundering. Despite this, the tower state housing blocks in cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and East London became hotbeds of resistance activity and paramilitary groups. Under Housing Secretary Polly Toynbee the Johnson administration went out to change this, hoping to transform Britain into a home-owning democracy.
Toynbee penned a green paper named “Renewal of the Housing Market” (RHM) endorsing home ownership as a “strong and natural desire" which "should be met". Whilst the paper envisioned the majority of affordable housing still being provided by the state, housing associations and private organisations would play a much greater role in providing housing. The most notable and controversial part of Tonybee’s policy was allowing state tenants to purchase their houses at 70% of its market value, with the revenue generated from the sale invested into the construction of new houses. Whilst the bill was opposed by the left of the SDP and the Socialist Alternative, National would abstain and several of National’s reformist liberals would vote with SDP MPs in the aye lobby.
Passing the reforms through Parliament was a great victory for Housing Secretary Toynbee
“Even over the course of its short life, RHM has seen a shift in its objectives. A clear descendant of an SDP focus on renewal in housing policy, it now occupies a much less comfortable place. RHM struggles to reconcile the new dominant discourse of ‘supply’ with its local tactical programmes of clearance. The answer lies on more qualitative ground. RHM needs to deliver neighbourhoods with higher quality housing; of the right mix; and in the right places to ease a wider economic agenda. This means two things. It may be helpful to have a more speculative take on what has caused signs of positive market outcomes and what forms success. Does RHM provide a stable platform for local housing markets should choppier waters be encountered?” - Renewal of the Housing Market in an era of new housing supply, Department of Housing Report (2007)
The policy would see an explosion in state tenants purchasing their own homes, with as many as 150,000 houses purchased across 2006. The SDP hoped that by giving ordinary people a stake in the country they could preserve democracy and poach middle-class voters from National. For the Socialist Alternative the result was a disaster, inner-city social housing was the core of the Alternative’s support, the Toynbee reforms pulled the rug out from under their voting base. In Socialist Alternative run authorities such as Merseyside the local government fought bitterly against these reforms but were overruled by the central Government. With a rift over privatisation, the EU and now housing, the gap between the SDP and Alternative continued to grow. Several within the Alternative’s radical flank began to turn on McDonnell, believing he was too soft on the SDP.
McDonnell was a folk hero to some, especially in Merseyside, but a younger generation of socialist politicians were losing patience
Opening up Britain’s housing stock also helped to improve relations with the EU, as Britain began to host various EU leaders coming to see the newly freed country. In early 2006 Otto Schilly. Schilly had grown up under the Nazis, and had played a key role as a lawyer representing various different paramilitary groups in Germany. He had also helped to oversee the integration of East Germany with the West. The Chancellor was no stranger to post dictatorship states and was a strong advocate of Britain's accession to the European Union. Whilst Schilly was generally welcomed in London, he was followed by anti-EU protesters angered at his role in Britain's accession. Most notably several members of the neo-facist NPP and Civil Assistance would harass Schilly, pointing to his Defence of the Red Army Faction in Germany. One CA sign that even made the international news compared Shilly to Adolf Hitler, in a thoroughly humiliating turn for the Johnson administration.
Despite the controversy the state visit was generally a success for the SDP Government, Schilly had spoken warmly of Johnson and the British Government, and Britain gained prestige from hosting Europe’s leading economy. The Civil Assistance protests generally hurt the National Party more than anything. Der Spiegel reported how some of the rhetoric on Civil Assistance placards mirrored those used by hard-line eurosceptic MPs in the Commons. As a pro-European Schilly’s state visit provided all of the disunity headaches for Collins without any of the glossy photo ops or international interviews. As usual National remained several steps behind in the political game. National’s troubles were reflected in the polls as one poll by Ipsos Mori put the SDP nine points ahead of National with 46% of the vote to National’s 37% and the Socialist Alternative’s 4%. If an election was held tomorrow National would get less votes than it got in 2005. The SDP seemed on track for a second term, and there was little National could do to stop them.
“Tim Collins' leadership is in trouble, one of his allies said yesterday, as shadow ministers talked down the party's position in the polls. National has fallen back and trailed the SDP in recent polls. But those closest to Mr Collins said those findings reinforced the leader's demand for change in the party. "The message that is coming out of the Manchester conference is again to say to the National party 'Don't assume everything is going to come right'. National MP Ed Vaizey told Sky's Sunday Live with Adam Boulton. Peter Ainsworth, the party's policy chief, said the leader's focus on social justice did not mean he was turning his back on core Conservative issues. In his speech to party faithful, Collins did not mention crime, Europe or the military.” - Collins in trouble as Tories lag behind in polls, Tania Branigan, The Guardian (2006)
Rumors of a leadership challenge had been going since the 05 election