David Brent was supposed to be a satire, now he looks like a model for political leaders
Attention-seeking, self-absorbed and desperate to be liked, David Brent was meant to embody everything a leader should not be – but today’s media landscape rewards the very qualities Ricky Gervais satirised, says Tim Focas
A Tiktok clip has gone viral for comparing Andy Burnham to David Brent. His cheesy mannerisms, dad dancing and guitar playing are all eerily reminiscent of the Ricky Gervais character that hit our screens 25 years ago. But Brent was supposed to be a satire, not a blueprint for modern political communications.
Back in the early 2000s, Gervais’s “character” was comedic gold because he embodied everything we were told a leader should not be – self-absorbed, painstakingly desperate for approval, and deludedly convinced of his own brilliance despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Yet somewhere along the way, something has gone disturbingly off course. We have started rewarding narcissism instead of laughing at it. The politics of the 2020s is now populated by figures who make David Brent look, well, modestly quaint. President Trump, perhaps the most obvious example, has adopted a political communication style that has far more in common with Brent than with JFK. Like Brent, Trump is a “chilled out entertainer” at heart – ok perhaps not so much of the chilled.
But the point is that both understand that attention is power and instinctively place themselves at the centre of everything. Perhaps most importantly though, both blur the line between theatrical performance and reality. The crucial difference, other than what Trump is doing in the real world, is that Brent was harmless. The genius of The Office was that it exposed narcissism as pathetic in an endearing, and almost comforting kind of way. Unfortunately, modern day politics delivers a completely opposing message.
Attention is a currency
The likes of Instagram and Tiktok have transformed “being known” into a form of achievement. In previous generations, public figures met rigorous editorial standards. Today, with traditional media nowhere near as influential, attention itself has become a currency. Whether that attention is positive or negative matters less than the fact that it exists. The result is a political environment that rewards the very traits Gervais once satirised.
In that sense, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Trump’s rise is that it happened after an entire generation grew up watching an iconic television show dedicated to exposing exactly his kind of behaviour. Today, personality cuts through way more effectively than policy, and politicians have become more like content creators, competing for attention in an overcrowded market.
Entertainment has always, in fairness, played a role in our politics. John F Kennedy was perhaps the first to understand the importance of image. Ronald Reagan’s thespian roots gave him a natural feel for television, while Bill Clinton understood that sex sells – well up until it didn’t for him.
The big difference is that the digital world has seemingly turned politics into a continuous performance where every statement is measured by “likes”. This has created a precarious, and many would argue vitriolic, feedback loop. The issue is that public discourse has become superficial thanks to the likes of Trump, Farage, and Andy “I’m not taking any tough questions from the lobby correspondents and will do soft ball podcasts” Burnham. The more serious issues, such as stagnant economic growth, the AI industrial revolution, not to mention ferocious global competition around trade, require much more nuanced conversations that can’t be articulated through a snappy social post. Unfortunately, in-depth conversations rarely go viral.
That is why the anniversary of The Office feels so pertinent. While the show assumed people could distinguish leadership from performance, yet if today’s leading politicians are anything to go by, this assumption was drastically wrong. The future depends on whether voters start thinking a little more about substance instead of spectacle. If they do not, Brent may have proven to be way ahead of his time.
Tim Focas is head of capital markets at Aspectus Group