If you want to understand how politics works, sometimes you have to look under the bonnet. That seems to be the BBC political correspondent Ben Wright’s view – hence his exploration around the “most secretive part of the British state”. Not MI6 or GCHQ, but the Government Car Service in Vauxhall.
The Wheels of Power first aired in 2011, as David Cameron’s coalition government was slashing back ministerial chauffeurs as part of a mass Whitehall cost-cutting agenda. A decade and a half later, questions of government largesse, spending pressures and ministerial entitlement are as relevant as ever – and by sheer coincidence, the programme is being rebroadcast. In audio terms it has a delightfully retro vibe; there’s no music or soundscapes, just the occasional door slam or engine rev as Wright is driven around Westminster. The spark comes entirely from his interviewees: the people ferrying politicians from A to B.
The stories they could tell! Not that they necessarily will, of course, as Wright discovers when he asks Denis Oliver, who drove Margaret Thatcher for 14 years, what massive decisions he heard her make in the back of his car. “You can give me a hint,” he urges. “I really couldn’t,” Oliver insists. In this business, discretion is everything. But there are still revelations. “If I switch on and it goes bang, that’s it,” one driver recalls of the job’s dangers at the height of the IRA’s car-bombing campaigns. Another recounts being the first person Geoffrey Howe told of his demotion from foreign secretary: “He said, ‘I’m Leader of the House,’ and I said to him, ‘Well that’s not a job!’”
More recently, we learn from Freedom of Information requests that Michael Gove asked to swap his Jaguar for a less ostentatious vehicle, while Eric Pickles did the opposite and requested a Jag. They were lucky: junior ministerial colleagues must now rely on pool cars – or worse, public transport. But the Prime Minister still gets a chauffeur, of course. Did Keir Starmer’s driver challenge him about the winter fuel cuts, as Oliver did to Thatcher over the poll tax? We’ll need another programme in 20 years to find out.
The Wheels of Power
BBC Radio 4
[Further reading: Flesh, death and bohemia]
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This article appears in the 10 Jun 2026 issue of the New Statesman, How Britain lost control
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