I wonder if the playwright, Sir David Hare, regrets that his knighthood was awarded all of six years ago. I’d bet that, had the offer been made more recently, he would have chosen to remain plain Mr. Given the otherwise full set of fashionable views that he parades through his plays, he would probably have joined in the current craze for dumping on the idea of honours.

There seems to be no left-liberal cliché which escapes Sir David’s attentions. His current play, The Permanent Way — in which he uses transcribed interviews to show the evils of rail privatisation — is merely the latest in a long line. Since his first outing at the National Theatre, Plenty, he has delivered a series of plays all with one thing in common: a slavish adherence to the left-liberal received wisdom of the day. Plenty was about a French Resistance fighter who becomes — as if you couldn’t guess — disillusioned with Britain. Pravda was about nasty, brutish press barons, Racing Demon the cynicism of the Church, Murmuring Judges the deformities of the legal system, and The Absence of War the betrayal of the Left by modernising Labour politicians.

His next National play, Stuff Happens, is going to focus on the role of US neoconservatives in pushing for war in Iraq. Yawn. I doubt if Sir David had even heard of the term “neocon” — let alone had the slightest idea what it really means — until a year or so ago, when its use became de rigueur among the chattering classes, who latch on unthinkingly to modish phrases.

Now, it seems that Sir David’s record is being questioned. One of the people he interviewed for The Permanent Way has accused him of manipulating his words for cynical effect. The biter is bit.

If you have never heard of Sir David and wonder why you should care about such a spat, remember that it’s your money which has ensured that his agenda is given so prominent a platform at the National Theatre. He is, you see, the archetypal modern Establishment playwright. Championed by the National — and thus funded by the taxpayer — Sir David is given free rein to trot out his left-liberal propagandist clichés on all the great issues of the day.

The rise of Sir David, and the Establishment’s veneration of him, symbolise what is so wrong with the artistic life of the country. Can you think of a single play dealing with, even on the loosest definition of the word, a political issue, which has been commissioned by the National Theatre — or indeed by any subsidised theatre — which does not come at its audience directly from the Left? Of course you can’t. Even to ask the question is ridiculous. And that does not cover directors’ habit of imposing their own agendas on existing plays. Last year’s National production of Henry V was not about Henry V but, as the director put it, the “dubious legitimacy” of the Iraq war (as opposed, one presumes, to the obvious legitimacy of a subsidised theatre pushing an explicit political agenda in its productions).

When Sir David and those of his ilk put their political beliefs into the form of their characters, they claim that they are giving an issue breadth and depth. What they usually do, however, is to sterilise debate with caricatured portrayals of evil, money-obsessed capitalists. Power, money and status are almost always, in their world-view, to be despised.

Fine. Sir David is as entitled to his views as the rest of us, and to test the success of his plays alongside all-comers. What he should not be entitled to do is peddle his views at our expense, as the beneficiary of a funding mechanism which refuses to allow any alternative to show its head.

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