Intelligence & security, explained.
The purpose for the Slow Horses is not rehabilitation but containment (Pedro Costa/Getty Images)
The Apple TV satire drawn from the popular books captures a security state more concerned with managing blame than confronting threats.
Subscribe to The Informer for monthly expert analysis, and to Events for advance notice of visiting world leaders and distinguished guests.
You may unsubscribe from Lowy Institute newsletters at any time. For information on our privacy practices and how to unsubscribe, see our Privacy Policy.
London rules: Slow Horses and the modern security stateLondon rules: Slow Horses and the modern security state
The past five seasons of Slow Horses, the television adaptation of Mick Herron’s Slough House novels, present a satirical look at security governance in Anglo-American liberal democracies worn down by years of counterterrorism and permanent emergency. What has emerged is a post-9/11 condition of functional ambivalence, in which increasingly sophisticated coercive and surveillance capacities coexist with ongoing institutional uncertainty about how, when, and to what end these powers should be exercised.
In this portrayal, the UK’s MI5 possesses formidable operational powers but is constrained by a culture of corporate managerialism that prioritises reputation, procedure and risk management over sustained strategic coherence. Decision-making unfolds under the constant anticipation of scrutiny and the politics of blame. Much of the intelligence work is desk-bound and technologically mediated, with decisions increasingly guided by political manoeuvring intended to minimise fallout and advance individual careers, rather than achieve strategic clarity. The most politically sensitive work is frequently delegated to entities designed to operate at arm’s length from the centre, absorbing risk and shielding senior leadership from direct responsibility.
At the heart of the series is Slough House, an MI5 unit used to sideline officers who have made career-ending mistakes without formally being dismissed. The series introduces this mechanism through the character River Cartwright, who is exiled to Slough House following a highly visible failure during a counterterrorism training exercise. The unit’s purpose is not rehabilitation but containment, carried out in deliberately degraded surroundings. By keeping failure, whether genuine or manufactured (as is the case for River), out of sight, MI5 protects itself from embarrassment and political scrutiny while retaining personnel deemed institutionally problematic. Slough House thus stabilises an organisation more concerned with managing reputational risk than dealing with the root causes of failure.
Lamb embodies a residual form of intelligence authority grounded in memory, instincts, and field experience rather than compliance metrics.
This governance logic is apparent in the types of crises that Slough House is repeatedly drawn into – many of which represent the delayed consequences and blowback from earlier political choices, Faustian deals, and security relationships. Within the series, threats such as Russian sleeper networks, far-right extremism, and Libyan-linked terrorism are framed less as challenges demanding clear and coherent strategic responses and more as liabilities to be contained. Risk and responsibility are systematically displaced from the centre at Regent’s Park (the fictional HQ of MI5) and managed through denial and blame-shifting rather than through genuine reckoning or institutional learning.
Hence, Slough House is not simply a holding pen for failed careers. Again and again, it is the unit MI5 turns to when work becomes politically awkward and operationally fraught or dangerous. The unit pursues questionable leads and undertakes high-risk interventions that the Park refuses to openly claim. When Slough House’s operations go well, credit migrates back to the centre, and when they go wrong, responsibility stays with the unit. In this way, its peripheral status becomes a practical advantage, providing plausible deniability and allowing the Park to act without owning the consequences.
The paradox at the heart of the series is that the most compromised, ostensibly reckless, and officially “incompetent” unit often proves the most operationally effective.
Jackson Lamb, masterfully portrayed by Gary Oldman, understands this institutional bargain better than anyone. A fatigued yet compelling anti-hero who cut his teeth in the “spook’s zoo” of Cold War-era East Berlin, Lamb recognises that Slough House’s marginality and poor reputation fulfil a practical organisational function. His disregard for decorum and disdain for the Park’s bureaucratic politics and procedures, represent an adaptation to, rather than a rejection of, the system. Removed from the Park’s managerial gaze, Lamb can act decisively where others hesitate. He also embodies a residual form of intelligence authority grounded in memory, instincts, and field experience rather than compliance metrics – an authority that contemporary security governance struggles to accommodate but still finds indispensable.
What Slow Horses captures so effectively is a mode of governance defined by the anticipation of failure and the need to manage its consequences. Much of this defensiveness is adaptive, reflecting the operational realities encountered by contemporary liberal security institutions. Operational decisions are filtered through their likely reception by ministers and oversight bodies, dictated by layered accountability structures that prevent responsibility from reaching the centre. The outcome is a form of exhausted authority, in which the state continues to surveil, detain, and intervene, but lacks enduring moral or strategic confidence.
Rendered with deliberate exaggeration and cynicism, Slow Horses depicts a security apparatus that is risk-averse, bureaucratic, politically driven, and intensely concerned with how things will look once the dust settles. While these traits enable operation under continuous scrutiny and political pressure, they entail significant trade-offs. The scope for discretion and learning diminishes as failure is managed and redirected rather than confronted directly.
Even the theme song reinforces this malaise. “Strange Game”, written and sung by Mick Jagger, frames intelligence work in terms of blame, exclusion, and survival within a bureaucracy, rather than heroism or mission. That sensibility reflects an old institutional instinct that has evolved into a governing logic,as Slow Horses puts it: “Moscow rules mean watch your back; London rules mean cover your arse”.
About the author
Monique Taylor
Dr Monique Taylor is University Lecturer in World Politics in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki.
Topics
The most-pressing world events explained by Lowy Institute experts and global contributors, in your inbox, every Thursday.
You may unsubscribe from The Interpreter at any time. For information on our privacy practices and how to unsubscribe, see our Privacy Policy.
