Twelve opinionated amateurs stand in a Portakabin in Manchester and try to run a mock cabinet meeting while Alastair Campbell stops the clock to bark that they’ve just triggered a run on the pound. Across six episodes, the Channel 4 series straps the contestants to news-cycle simulators: a sudden rail strike, a hostage crisis, a social-media pile-on after a badly phrased tweet. Each week one player is sacked with the words “You are not prime minister”, the boardroom replaced by a wood-panelled Downing Street set stripped of its power but not its theatre.
Sayeeda Warsi provides counterweight, praising a Tory candidate’s tax plan then shredding a Corbynite’s campaign video for lacking patriotism. Archive clips of Blair and Cameron appear like ghosts of administrations past, their polished soundbites measuring how far these novices fall short. Viewers never vote; the judges alone decide, turning the contest into a seminar on what professional politicians think the public wants rather than what it says it wants.
Jackie Weaver, the parish-council viral star, leaves episode three after her calm COVID briefing is judged “too local”. The eventual winner, ex-military charity boss Darius Norell, claims only a laminated certificate and the right to sit for a humiliating breakfast-TV interrogation the morning after transmission. Ratings started at 800,000 and halved, yet the format is optioned for a second run, proof that Westminster’s self-regard can always be monetised.
Production Details
Channel 4 / 1 Season / 6 Episodes / 2022 - Present
Producer(s): Charlie McLean
Main Cast
Alastair Campbell as Alastair Campbell
Sayeeda Warsi as Sayeeda Warsi
