On and on the protestations of left-wing virtue go, but I doubt their sincerity. Although they are fond of accusing others of money worship, our dramatists remain too fond of a fee themselves. Commissioning editors will not pay them unless they write to a format, and agree with British television's working assumption that everyday politics is "boring". Neil McKay, the author of a biopic of Mo Mowlam, was the most honest when he described the struggle he had to make Channel 4 even consider dramatising the life of one of the most interesting politicians of the last 30 years. He struggled because in the minds of his paymasters even bringing peace to Ireland was a bore. "It is striking the extent to which the ‘connection' most commissioning editors believed would appeal to their presumed audience was one that emphasised ‘sleaze'," says Fielding. "So far as these influential gatekeepers were concerned, if politics was not to be ‘boring' it had to be ‘sleazy'." To put it another way, dramatists have been following television's money with the eagerness of truffle hounds.

The second reason for doubting dramatists' words match their deeds is that they imagine a democracy where change is impossible because the British are a race of sheep. They must paint us as fools because if you believe that contemptible politicians live in fear of Iannucci's spin-doctors, you must also believe that the voters who believe the spin are more contemptible still.

Characteristically, the only two members of the public depicted in Beaton's drama about David Blunkett's unhappy love life, A Very Social Secretary, were described in the cast list as a "Fat Woman" and "Drunk". The fat woman was a self-pitying scrounger who claimed to be disabled when all she needed to do to restore her health was to stop eating kebabs in bed. The drunk was a racist who admired Blunkett's hard line on asylum-seekers. The politicians are crooks and the public are bigots. The elite is corrupt and the masses are stupid. Representative democracy fails on all counts because there is no possibility of renewal from below.

In Europe in the early 20th century, such hatred of democracy heralded the age of the dictators. Today it heralds a version of conservatism — not traditional conservatism, which venerates institutions and demands that you respect the office if not the man, but libertarian conservatism. The democratic state is useless, and beyond hope of reform. The only hope is to strip it down, sell it off, and stop rent-seekers pocketing public money. Small wonder then that a Conservative-led coalition should want to honour Iannucci. The best of the joke is that Iannucci still does not understand why.