"Abolish Economists!": The Britcom Yes Minister and the Transformation of British Conservatism in the Thatcher Era

Abstract: What role did formats of popular culture play in the renaissance of political conservatism after 1968? The Britcom Yes Minister (1980–88) is generally viewed as a left-wing satire of the elitism of the British civil service. Nikolai Wehrs, however, shows how the authors of the TV series purposely merged the left-wing antiestablishment narrative with a new middle class populism, and thereby created a political-cultural space of possibility for the conservative ideology of Thatcherism. He argues that Yes Minister allows for the investigation of the central transformation processes of British conservatism under the aegis of Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s.