This Government has become as unpredictable as HBO’s adaptation after it ran out of George RR Martin’s source material
Daily Telegraph 10/07/26
There are those who think it matters not that innumerable journalists, sub-editors and email authors have got into the habit of referring to Andy Burnham, our prime minister presumptive, as “The King of the North”.
I have gone to great lengths, in this column and on X, to remind everyone that if they’re going to use pop culture references, they should do so with greater accuracy. In the first season of Game of Thrones, the character Robb Stark is given the title of King in the North by his followers. In, not “of”.
I do not need reminding that this doesn’t really matter. We all know to whom the reference applies, after all. It’s a well-chosen nickname because, even though Burnham is notoriously reluctant to mention it in public, he is, in fact, from the North himself. My contention is that there is no point in adopting any cultural reference unless you do so accurately. As Alan Partridge might say: “Stop doing Game of Thrones wrong!”
But since we’re on the subject of the TV adaptation of George RR Martin’s unfinished epic, A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF), it might be worth, while we wait impatiently for the usurper to take his seat on the iron throne in Downing Street, extending the Burnham metaphor to breaking point.
A Song of Ice and Fire, which is supposed to run to seven volumes but whose author is far too busy doing just about anything else to finish the last two books in the series, is based in an imaginary medieval society known as Westeros, an unhappy confederation of seven kingdoms brought under the iron fist of the king and whichever family happens to be military dominant at any one time.
The genius of ASOIAF is that it eschews all the usual clichés and predictable plotlines too frequently associated with fantasy literature. Central characters which the reader has got to know and love are dispensed with brutally and completely unexpectedly, leaving you open-mouthed and angry at having invested so much time and emotion in a fictional character.
(After reading Martin’s account of the infamous “Red Wedding”, I phoned up my then parliamentary researcher to castigate him for recommending that I read the books in the first place. After a short delay, I persevered with them anyway).
The first five seasons of the TV series follow the narrative of the first five books fairly faithfully, which is why they stand as some of the best TV ever produced. But then, as the sixth and seventh books in Martin’s series were not written, the TV writers ran out of source material and were left to their own devices.
And so the last three seasons were packed with the kind of cliché, predictable plots and absurd story developments that you would expect from your average US TV executives, leaving many fans wishing they had stopped watching after season five end
I mention this because watching the first two years of this Labour Government has been like watching an equally chaotic and unpredictable chorus of characters pursuing bizarre courses of action that surprise their viewers at every turn.
The Lord Alli’s donations of clothes and spectacles to our newly elected Government? No one saw that coming! A Cabinet member resigning over a prior conviction for fraud? I didn’t have that one on my bingo card. Appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador just a few months before his close relationship with the world’s most famous paedophile became public? That might actually have been a plot in the third book of ASOIAF.
And all of that was before Keir Starmer responded to the loss of a great battle (the May 7 elections) by bringing Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman back into the Government – the kind of humorous sub-plot for which Jim Broadbent and Dame Diana Rigg might have been cast.
But here’s the thing: we’ve run out of canon. We’ve reached the end of the official plotline; everything from here on in is unclear. We have nothing to guide us, to prepare for whatever comes next.
In the original story, the King in the North comes to an extremely sticky end: he is murdered and beheaded at his uncle’s wedding and the head of his pet dire-wolf is sewn onto his unfortunate body. Grisly stuff.
But that needn’t necessarily happen with our own Robb Stark. It’s quite possible that Andy Burnham will confound his critics and his enemies in King’s Landing (Westminster) and do what the young Stark failed to do: take the throne and rule effectively.
Or, depending on how the new script pans out, his regime could fall to a peasants’ revolt (general election), with him and his family being forced to seek sanctuary from the new murderous king (not yet cast) in the grim, savage-run wilderness north of The Wall (Scotland).
We just don’t know yet because the script has yet to be written. All we know for sure is that there will be record viewers for the opening episode of the new season. The writers had best not disappoin
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