Calls for Netflix’s Adolescence to be shown in schools reveal the dire state of our national conversation, says Emma Revell

For years I have joked that reality TV may be the only way to get some people to understand the severity of the housing crisis. Find an over-confident Boomer who is still harping on about having double-digit interest on a mortgage they’ve long since paid off. Have them switch lives with a twenty-something living in a box room in Fulham and paying £2,000 a month for the privilege. Then see how long it takes them to crumble.

Turns out, I might be on to something.

In the 1970s a group of Conservative thinkers, including Margaret Thatcher, recognised that in order to address the critical issues facing Britain they needed to understand the complex and often unrecognised ways those issues were interconnected. Only once that had been mapped out could solutions be found that would actually work, rather than deliver superficial change.

That project became known as Stepping Stones and it went on to become the blueprint for the achievements of the Thatcher era – tackling the power of the unions, freeing industry to thrive, creating an economic boom and cementing London as a global financial centre for decades to come.

Netflix now decides the Prime Minister’s priorities

Today, the Prime Minister appears to decide on his political priorities by watching Netflix. 

That’s not to say Keir Starmer is alone in being caught up in government-by-Gogglebox. The last Conservative government was as energised by ITV’s ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’ as the current Labour leader seems to be by Netflix’s Adolescence. But nevertheless, it says a lot about the dire state of thought leadership in this country if the entire national conversation can be shaped by half a dozen episodes of fictionalised TV drama. 

A Downing Street roundtable hosted by the Prime Minister should be a serious affair, not something dictated by our TV viewing habits. It only got more farcical when it was announced that Netflix had subsequently agreed to make the show available for all secondary schools to show to their pupils.