James Graham: Drama can show us how tortuous it really is forming a coalition

I know that to some it might not sound too exciting on paper. A drama about the five days following the 2010 general election that charts how politicians met with other politicians to see what policies they shared, to see if they could share power.

In fact, when Coalition, the TV drama I’ve written which airs this Saturday, was announced, I had to smile at some of the responses. “Nick Clegg: The Movie” was how one paper described it. “I read about this and was waiting for the punchline,” another commentator wrote.

However, bear with me. After interviewing those who were there to get the backstage story — from MPs to aides, journalists to civil servants — I grew to realise that what happened in those genuinely crazy five days, five years ago (is it really that long?) was one of the most mesmerising, surprising, and — if you can believe it — moving dramas to take place on the British political stage in my lifetime.

Picture if you can the then-Prime Minister stumbling through a dark tunnel underneath Downing Street to partake in a top-secret meeting (a passageway that, until the Cabinet Secretary pointed it out, he didn’t even realise existed).

Picture grown men and women in a meeting of Liberal Democrat MPs shaking with emotion and shedding actual tears as they wrestled with the decision in front of them. Read the transcript of Gordon Brown’s final phone call as Prime Minister — a position he’d coveted his whole life, believing he could make a real difference to the country — and witness it all slip away…

Fine, but why do we need to tell that story? It’s over, we’re about to enter another election where it might all happen again. My answer is: because we’re about to enter another election where it might all happen again. And I really think we need to talk about it.

I’m a playwright, not a journalist, so I’m biased when it comes to the importance of storytelling in making sense of the world. I wrote a play at the National Theatre a couple of years ago called This House about the last hung parliament in the Seventies which saw the shedding of (very literal) blood, sweat and tears (no matter what you think of the current Coalition, forming it didn’t result in a death toll in double digits from exhaustion, heart attacks and aneurysms).

Today I begin rehearsals for a new play The Vote. This is a televised theatrical event I’m writing in collaboration with Josie Rourke, the Donmar Warehouse’s artistic director, to be broadcast live in the final 90 minutes of voting on election night. I feel lucky to be part of a generation of drama-makers (writers, directors and producers, on stage and screen) who see it as their responsibility to not just let national events be reported on journalistically but to try to represent them artistically as well.

This isn’t just “history”, then. It speaks to what is about to happen in May. When I met Gus O’Donnell — the Cabinet Secretary back in 2010 who facilitated the meetings between parties — he passionately explained to me his concerns about how any negotiations in another hung parliament might be tougher this time. Last time, no one involved had done it before. Politicians were able to sit at the negotiating table with a clean slate.

This time, savvier journalists are pinning down senior party officials already over what they would and would not consent to. Everyone is being forced to draw lines in advance. This might create an impossible stalemate when the electorate delivers its verdict. Politicians are painting themselves into all sorts of corners.