James Graham has an uncanny talent for writing political-history plays without taking sides. When I saw the National Theatre’s first production of This House (2012), his account of the precarious 1974-79 Labour government as seen through the Labour and Conservative whips’ offices, I felt more dramatically sympathetic towards the Tory opposition, probably because Charles Edwards, who played deputy chief whip Bernard “Jack” Weatherill, is almost unable not to radiate integrity. This time Nathaniel Parker’s Weatherill is sleeker and more unyielding, and Malcolm Sinclair as chief whip Humphrey Atkins utilises his skill at drawling with a long face whilst putting a smirk in his voice. Across the stage, Labour’s first chief Bob Mellish cast himself as a Cockney geezer and is consummately engeezed by Phil Daniels, whilst Steffan Rhodri as deputy Walter Harrison combines a passion for his party with an equal fervour for being in “the engine room” of parliament.

This a play about the how rather than the what or why. The party leaders do not appear onstage, and MPs other than the whips are scarcely ever referred to by name, but rather by their constituency: even Margaret Thatcher, who rose to the Conservative leadership during this period, is “Finchley” at first, and when in office, to her own whips, “the Lady”. Poli-geeks such as myself can play at identifying members (there goes John Stonehouse, alias Walsall North, faking his suicide; here comes Norman St John Stevas, a.k.a. Chelmsford, with his bouffant coiffure), but such appearances are incidental to the business of the whips trying to manage, or to combat, Labour’s wafer-thin advantage in parliamentary numbers over four and a half turbulent years.

Director Jeremy Herrin revisits his NT production; once again, some members of the audience are seated on or above the stage (one woman among whom was stroked in passing on opening night by the libidinous Alan Clark... sorry, Plymouth Sutton), and a live rock band punctuates the action with snatches from songs of the era, most trenchantly David Bowie’s “Five Years”. Pre-echoes of more current matters are kept to a minimum: no mention, for instance, of the 67% “Yes” result of the 1975 referendum on British membership of the EU (as it then wasn’t). This is a fascinating account of the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy, symbolised by the innards of Big Ben looming over all.

Written for the Financial Times.