Underneath the influence

Feature writer

Saturday 30 June 2012

When you're a kid, you think it's the big kids who have the power.

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Mark Smith

Then you become a big kid and realise it's the adults. Then you become an adult and realise it's your boss. Then you're made a boss and you realise there's another boss above you, and another above him, and so on and so on, up and up to the secret place where true power resides. The point is, most of us, no matter how high we go, never reach that place. Power is always up ahead. It's always in the next room.

Last week on television there were two demonstrations of this rule – one British, one American – and they both proved you can get pretty high in life without ever reaching the place where the decisions are made, without ever making it to the power room.The British example was Newsnight and the appearance on Tuesday by Treasury Minister Chloe Smith to defend the Government's decision to scrap the fuel duty rise. Ms Smith was, unsurprisingly, demolished by Jeremy Paxman. She was a fava bean. He was Hannibal Lecter. She was a strawberry. He was a blender. The impression that lingered after the blood-splattered encounter was that Smith, even though she's an MP and minister, has no real power. The power is up above her somewhere. All she has to do is take the blame.Essentially, that was the main point of Armando Ianucci's new comedy Veep (Sky Atlantic, Monday, 10pm), which provided the American example of the power-is-elsewhere rule. A spin on The Thick Of It formula, the show follows fictional Vice President Selina Meyer, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. What Meyer discovers is that she may have limos and security men but she has no actual influence. Even more frustratingly, she can sense power in the other room. She can feel the throb and judder of it through the wall but can never reach it. In a nice running gag she constantly asks if the president has called. The answer, delivered by an eye-rolling secretary, is always no.To make matters worse, should the vice president ever start to think she has any real power, there are always presidential aides around to remind her she doesn't. In one of the highlights of episode one, Meyer is due to make a speech about oil, plastics and corn starch, but a few seconds before she goes on, is told by the president's office that she can't mention oil, plastics or corn starch. "What's left?" she says. "Hello, and some prepositions?"It's one of the best lines in a script that's full of wonderful jabs and thrusts. At one point the vice president is told to mingle at a press conference even though virtually nobody has turned up. "How do I mingle in a room with so few people?" she says. "Did Simon mingle with Garfunkel?"The set-up may essentially be West End farce but, like The Thick Of It, Veep manages to make some important points about politics, and the main point is especially important at a time when the British government is in the middle of an omnishambles: politics isn't about your agenda, your manifesto or even your principles. It's about trying not to make mistakes and about how you cope when you do.

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