A Box Set recommendation for Labour: A little less West Wing. A little more Friday Night Lights

***I DON’T THINK IS TOO SPOILER TASTIC BUT READ AT YOUR OWN CAUTION****

I was pleasantly surprised to read that one of Liz Kendall’s hobbies was watching Box Sets. Like many things about my favourite politician that I hadn’t heard of a fortnight ago, it felt refreshingly authentic and honest. When job applications ask me about my hobbies, I feel embarrassingly short on things like orienteering, golf or haberdashery. To be honest, I love sitting about watching stuff, or reading stuff, usually with trousers that don’t require a belt. I suppose you can’t call this a hobby, but it is what I like doing with my time.

In the very unlikely event that Liz, or any of the leadership candidates have any free time between interviews, fundraising, hustings and trying to play the role of Darth Vader, to Len McCluskey’s Emperor Palpatine, they might have a bit of spare time to watch a box set. If they do, or indeed any other Labour Party members are looking for something to watch, they might want to leave The West Wing box set on the shelf, and check out Friday Night Lights instead.

I love The West Wing. Lots of people I know the love The West Wing. It is not quite a TV programme about politics, for people who love Politics, but it comes close. It depicts a team of dedicated West Wing staffers who work for President Josiah Bartlett, an intellectual Liberal from New Hampshire. They are outstandingly likeable people, who manage to overcome difficulties through a combination of their intelligence and nobility. It has a cast of characters that are remarkably endearing in different ways, and there is one called Mandy as well.

However, it isn’t a harsh and gritty depiction of the reality of political life in Washington. It is a fantasy. A fairy tale. A Cinderalla on the Potomac.

President Bartlett is awesome, but he’s kind of an awesome douche as well. In one episode he invites everyone around for chilli in the residence, and before serving up the grub, does a dodgy German accent, embarrasses his daughter and then finishes his pre-dinner speech with this:

“Do you know that when smallpox was eradicated, it was considered the single greatest humanitarian achievement of this century? Surely we can do it again, as we did in the times when our eyes looked towards the heavens and, with outstretched fingers, we touched the face of God. Here’s to absent friends and the ones that are here now. Cheers.”

Who says something like that?! Those poor staffers started work before seven. They just wanted some dinner, and this is the chat before tea is served.

Top tip, when hosting a Mexican dinner party just say you hope the chilli is not too hot and say there is more Corona in the fridge.

President Bartlett is a character conceived by a man that consumes politics, written for people (largely) who consumers politics, but not everyone does so. I think the Labour Party needs to elect a leader that doesn’t just appeal to those who eat, sleep and breathe politics on twitter, they need to elect a leader who appeals to those who have barely head of twitter.

It is also a particular type of fantasy. A progressive fantasy. Plenty of friends I know who are right leaning love the West Wing as well, and the show has some outstanding Republican characters, but they are never around for long. A West Wing weakness is its portrayal of a clever and wise Camelot, holding back the tide of a feckless and stupid conservative country. The notion that people live in a country where things would be so much better if those right wingers just weren’t so backward and selfish, could be dangerous, eh?

As I observe the evolution of the UK, I wonder if there is certain dynamic emerging that is similar to that in the US, and a problem that Labour might share with the Democrats. To summarise very crudely, many poorer voters in the American South are ardent Republicans, where their parents and forefathers were once Democrats. The split began during the Civil Rights movement of the sixties and remains in place now. Partly this is about moral issues like abortion and its associated religious complications. But there also seems to be a cultural divide. Terms like ‘Beltway’ or ‘Hollywood’ are used as insults in the US, and I can see similarities with the way certain individuals spit out the term ‘Westminster.’ I’ve talked before about the ‘UK establishment’ narrative in Scotland. I don’t know if it will become as pronounced, but I think we are seeing cultural ripples beginning to alter the political fabric of the United Kingdom

And so to Friday Night Lights.

Friday Night Lights is a TV programme about a High School Football team in Texas, the Dillon Panthers, but it is about much more than that. The football might be the centre of the show, but it is also a prism for telling the stories of the families that live in this smallish town in Texas. It is a depiction of what Hawthorne might have meant, when he wrote: “Families are always rising and falling in America.” He probably didn’t have quite as many cheerleaders or barbecue in mind though.

It is hugely sentimental, but also unflinching when it confronts issues around race, disability, crime and poverty. It shows people who do bad things, hold bad views, but that ultimately are not bad people. It felt relevant to me in a week when another set of immigration figures were published, and the inevitable howl of protests followed, from both the defenders and critics of immigration.

I believe in immigration. I believe in its economic, cultural and social benefits. But not everyone does, and not everyone who is angry about it is a bad person.

From a Labour perspective, I sometimes feel like no thoughtful response to these fears is being articulated, as we oscillate widely between pandering to these grievances or demonising the people who hold them. People have been left behind by the tides of globalisation, and the scramble to craft a messaging and policy response is underway. But as Daniel Johnson said here: “we have a generation of leaders who think in policy memos. We come up with clever stuff, things that will work. But the electorate does not think in bullet points.”

Absolutely. Unless we understand the stories of people’s lives, we will bad develop policy, and unless we understand how to tell stories relevant to their lives, we will have bad politics.

Part of that has to be the recognition that identity plays in all of this. There is a scene early in Friday Night Lights where two of the characters say: “Texas Forever.” They’re not defining themselves against someone else, or making themselves feel superior, by asserting the inferiority of others. For them “Texas Forever” represents a sense of strength in who they are, where they are from, but also where they want to go and what they want to achieve. A common failure of the left is to think just about the distribution of resources and economic power. This is a mistake more than ever. Human beings are more than just an extension of their class. A town is not robbed of its soul by the loss of its industry.

The fictional town of Dillon is in is in a precarious position, but a sense of community sustains it, even when economic forces do not. Every Friday night during football season, people come together to cheer on the Dillon Panthers. It gives them something to look forward to, something to care about, but above all, it gives them something to hope for.

There it is. That hope thing again.

We won’t come up with a convincing hopeful message, or a policy platform that inspires optimism if we are hindered by a fantasy of how our politics and our society is or should be. It will be addressed by trying to understand the difficulties that real life presents for ordinary people and empowering them so they can try and make their lives better, not remote elite trying to do it for them. It won’t be about dramatic monologues in Cathedrals, it will be about inspiring speeches in school gyms.

So I’d urge you all to give ‘Friday Night Lights’ a try. Even if you think all this analysis is total guff, you can enjoy the beauty of the haunted eyes, and tortured soul of Tim Riggins.