In this episode we see the beleaguered Minister for Social Affairs and Citizenship, Nicola Murray, facing problems both at home and at work while still trying to push through her badly thought out "Fourth Sector Social Mobility" initiative to her disinterested team.
On top of that she is called into the school principle's office to be told one of her daughters has been bullying other pupils to the point where she is going to have to be excluded. It would seem moving her from a private school to a state school for reasons of government policy, reluctantly supported by Murray, has turned her daughter into a wild-child.
Nicola desperately wants to keep this matter private but inevitably most of her staff have got wind of it probably because they have little or no respect for her due to being so weak and indecisive.
The biggest problem of all for Nicola is her Opposition Minister, a world-weary Peter Manion, who has found out about her daughter's expulsion and her Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker, is not best pleased and is on the warpath, fearing that Manion will make political capital out of it.
An episode with both political parties sharing the limelight with a Minister always out of her depth and a Shadow Minister so cynical about all aspects of modern politics that he would rather just give it all up.
But we also get to see the respective support teams and how incompetent/gossipy they can be, while their bosses have their own communication style of getting the message across: Tucker resorting to old-school shouting and bullying, while Peterson goes with a more progressive passive-aggressive approach.
Good performances all round as well as raising some questions about private and state education in the UK. It is also apparent that no one can be trusted to keep a secret and that government Departments seem to be run by incompetents and/or backstabbers who will stop at nothing to win favour.
On top of that she is called into the school principle's office to be told one of her daughters has been bullying other pupils to the point where she is going to have to be excluded. It would seem moving her from a private school to a state school for reasons of government policy, reluctantly supported by Murray, has turned her daughter into a wild-child.
Nicola desperately wants to keep this matter private but inevitably most of her staff have got wind of it probably because they have little or no respect for her due to being so weak and indecisive.
The biggest problem of all for Nicola is her Opposition Minister, a world-weary Peter Manion, who has found out about her daughter's expulsion and her Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker, is not best pleased and is on the warpath, fearing that Manion will make political capital out of it.
An episode with both political parties sharing the limelight with a Minister always out of her depth and a Shadow Minister so cynical about all aspects of modern politics that he would rather just give it all up.
But we also get to see the respective support teams and how incompetent/gossipy they can be, while their bosses have their own communication style of getting the message across: Tucker resorting to old-school shouting and bullying, while Peterson goes with a more progressive passive-aggressive approach.
Good performances all round as well as raising some questions about private and state education in the UK. It is also apparent that no one can be trusted to keep a secret and that government Departments seem to be run by incompetents and/or backstabbers who will stop at nothing to win favour.
