You join us on a steam train in Scotland as we head to the next episode of the BBC’s hit show Political Traitors. It’s like the celebrity edition, except that everyone is less comely – politics being the practice of show business for ugly people. For this week’s task, the players have to construct a “budget” of tiny crowd-pleasing measures, carefully balanced by invisible tax rises.
What makes the show so compelling is that the players don’t know the whole story. Only those of us on the outside can see what’s really going on. While John and Andy run around shouting about how they have faithfully met their “fiscal rules” in the third year of the forecasts, on our sofas at home we know that this incantation is entirely meaningless.
But people who’ve been on the show say that when you’re in the midst of it, it feels completely real. So much so that there are ongoing questions for the producers about safeguarding. Liz, who was a sensation of chaotic energy when she briefly appeared in 2022, is the most obvious example of someone who shouldn’t have been allowed to take part. She was last heard explaining her plan to colonise Mars.
If the series has any value beyond entertainment, it’s for the insights it offers into human psychology, especially the way people convince themselves of narratives that are objectively nonsense. Take Kemi, from the current run. After the banishment of Keir earlier this year, she could be heard explaining to anyone who would listen that this was the result of her brilliant inquisitions at the roundtable.
We could all see that the other players, after debating why on earth Keir hadn’t already been stabbed in the back, had concluded that although he was 100% faithful, he was also 1000% loser.
Nevertheless, there’s something rather charming about Kemi’s total conviction that she’s a masterly player on course for triumph. It’s easy for us to laugh, but you have to remember that she doesn’t have access to the information we do, such as opinion polls and byelection results.
That information gap is the joy of the show. Several times Nigel has seemingly revealed himself to be a traitor, and his close ally Nathan was actually unmasked as one, but still no one seems able to put two and two together.
Some players adopt a strategy of trying to fly below the radar to avoid being noticed. One current player, Ed D, has been so successful that many viewers have forgotten he exists and refuse to believe he is part of the game at all, even after his triumph in the water slide task.
Each morning, the players meet over breakfast TV for a heated discussion in which they all insist that whatever has just happened proves their theory is right. Then there’s the dramatic moment of discovering who has been banished, or simply walked off the set. In one compelling episode in 2022, almost all the players quit in the hope of forcing Boris to admit he’d been lying. Even then, to viewers’ delight, he still had the support of the loyal Nadine.
In last month’s “conference” task, the players were handed the severed head of a deceased teammate and had to mimic their distinctive cry. Kemi, predictably, chose Maggie, although her impersonation looked more like pastiche. Andy, on the other hand, reckons he can do a mean Harold. He’s rejected any suggestion that he should try copying Tony, one of the game’s most successful players, but he’s failed to brush aside the lingering suspicion that he’s simply doing an impression of Keir.
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The format has been sold around the world, with changes for local markets. The French edition involves a runoff vote. The Israeli version is so complicated that no one understands anything about it except that somehow Bibi keeps winning. And the American one is louder, brasher and far more expensive. It also seems to be played entirely by idiots who have failed, despite an impossible number of very clear clues, to identify their obvious traitor.
Although the players change at an alarming rate, the one constant in the British show is the host, Lindsay. With his ridiculous outfits and his catchphrases – “Order! ORDER!” and “Mr Holden, I think you need to leave” – he is fast becoming a national treasure. And now, as he says at the end of every roundtable, the time for talk is over.
I’m joking, of course. In this version of the show, the time for talk never ends.
