Old lefties like me ought to be cheering on London’s theatre right now, with the sudden rush of plays about the big moments in Labour’s history. But there’s a problem. Most of them are rubbish history.

Perhaps James Graham’s The Standard of Living, a new play about Maynard Keynes - advocate of government spending and economic architect of the Attlee settlement - will break the mould. I do hope so, I’ve seen too many prettified versions of the left-wing’s past.

I felt this recently with The National Theatre’s play about Nye Bevan, the creator of the National Health Service (NHS). This reminds us that before 1948, people died from treatable illnesses because they didn’t have the money to go to the doctor.

Unfortunately, it seems as though playwright Tim Price has only read a textbook on playwriting, and learned that he has to have one protagonist, who fights single-handedly for what is ‘right’. Price’s Prime Minister Clement Attlee has to be against everything our hero is trying to do - horrified at Bevan’s conflict with the doctors and withdrawing support at a crucial moment. If there was any truth in this, we would not have the NHS. Bevan succeeded because Attlee took the risk of appointing him and then backed him to the hilt.  Bevan even wears pyjamas throughout the play. I hated this device and Price does not seem to want us to take him seriously at all. His Bevan is politically naive, pushed forward by clever friends, unable to set his passions aside and calculate except when someone else shows him how. In reality, Nye was exactly the opposite. 

Like Tim Price, the writers of In The Print, Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky, feel Labour needs a heroic theatrical myth. The Kings Head recently offered a production of this play about the 1986 industrial dispute that destroyed the power of the print unions. On our left, union leader Brenda Dean, appears as loyal, true, upstanding; and on our right, wise-old-bird Rupert Murdoch, the voice of the future.  To clear the way for their protagonists the play diminished everyone else. Journalists’ leader Harry Conroy and Trade Union Congress (TUC) leader Norman Willis were very far from being the venal and ridiculous figures this play makes them out to be, while the real Rupert Murdoch is immensely cruel, rich and powerful - not a bit like the Falstaffian rogue shown here.

And such issues are not merely a problem in ‘straight’ theatre. A new musical by Tim Gilvin and Alex Kanevsky, Cable Street, is about the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, credited as the moment the tide turned against Mosley’s fascists. This noisy, tuneful, heroic celebration, told without much subtlety but with verve and brio, started at the Southwark Playhouse and had a run at North London’s Marylebone Theatre. It so wants to be joyful! It patronizes the anti-fascists by presenting them joyfully and there is a historically absurd scene in which uniformed fascists act like parody sinister Nazis - a true “ve are asking ze kvestions” moment. It makes fascism no more dreadful and in fact, it almost sanitises fascism to have its adherents behaving like stage villains in a children’s play.

Let’s celebrate the Labour movement’s victories. But please, let’s treat our audiences like adults, who can handle the truth, with all its complexities and nuances.

James Graham’s The Standard of Living plays at Theatre Royal Haymarket between 21 September - 12 December 2026: Box Office

The National Theatre’s Nye played between 24 February - 11 May 2024

Robert Khan’s and Tom Salinksy’s In The Print played at The King’s Head Theatre 26 March - 3 May 2026

Tim Gilvin’s and Alex Kanfesky’s Cable Street played at The Marylebone Theatre between 16 January - 28 February 2026