More politicians, please

When was the last time a serving politician looked at the jobs page?

A FEW weeks ago I ran into an adviser for an opposition front-bencher. I put it to him that life must be a bit dull given that his opposing department was generally deemed to be in a good place. Oh no, I was admonished, before being excitedly treated to a list of indiscretions, gaffes and rumours of conflicts with other Ministers over which the adviser intended to make hay. A short while later I had dinner with a group of MPs. One, a long-serving Parliamentarian, advised a newer colleague never to drink before taking part in a debate. “Even a drop will make your words sound slurred on the wireless” he counselled quaintly.

I relate these stories as evidence of how easily and completely the political class absorbs itself. The list of blunders related to me won’t even be tomorrow’s chip wrapping because they are too trivial to make today’s papers. And the idea that a meaningful number of the newer MP’s constituents would tune into any intervention in any debate, much less make a beeline for his, is laughable. There is a kinder interpretation to both anecdotes, of course. You need to keep chipping away at your opponent while in opposition, and the advice about drinking is probably sensible. But even so, it does not deflect from basic thesis that too many of our politicians are far too interested in their own little world.

The rise of the professional political class is long lamented and well documented, most successfully by Peter Oborne in a book of a not dissimilar title. The spectre of a Parliament (and, for that matter, a Senedd) stuffed with past researchers, advisers and spin-doctors – and future quangocrats – is one invoked routinely to explain the decline of the esteem in which we hold politicians. If we recruit as our legislators those with little or no experience outside of politics, why should we expect them to reflect the realities of life in the round?

It is a critique that tends to come from the libertarian right of politics, and hence carries some distracting baggage. It can often appear as a call to return to the days of fewer Players and more Amateurs, when politics (and cricket) was peopled by those with independent means. As such, it is perceived as an arrow pointed at Labour’s heart, who made the remuneration of MPs an early and successful cause celebre precisely so that working men and women could enter Parliament. Even outside the question of class, it can appear repugnant to those who believe that politics ought to be something to which its practitioners give their undivided – and un-conflicted – attention.

Yet those who reject the Oborne thesis tend also to be those who in other ways press for a broader-based political class. They call for action to secure a greater proportion of women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities in politics. In turn, this approach is rejected by those who decry a largely male, white and able-bodied political class. It is ironic, because both have identified the same essential truth; a legislature that does not contain a wide range of perspectives and experiences is likely to make worse laws than one that does.

It is a predicament that may soon be compounded by the coalition government’s plans to reduce the number of MPs by 10%, a move will affect Wales more than any other part of the UK. With fewer MPs those who remain will have a greater workload. Their attention will focussed more squarely on doing the job of politics better. A greater degree of specialisation and professionalism will follow, making the role less suitable to those from outside the apprenticeship scheme of the political staffer. It won’t be a fundamental change, but it will make the slope of attracting people from the private sector (for this is what is nearly always meant when people decry the insularity of the political class) that bit steeper.

So what is the solution? We cannot go back to a time when being an MP was something to be fitted in around another profession. Even those who call for politicians to be drawn from a wider range of backgrounds must surely concede that it requires discrete and distinct skills, or a degree or professionalism of its own. Handling casework, dealing with the media, navigating arcane voting procedure and conducting scrutiny is not, as much as we might wish it, a job for well-meaning dabblers. Equally, however, the horizon-narrowing effect of the Westminster Village or Cardiff Bay Bubble is something that must be resisted. Surgeries, door-knocking and chance encounters with “real people” give the illusion of being in touch, but are a thin substitute. In point of fact, most MPs and AMs work far more than a conventional week, a credit to them as individuals but something that isolates them yet further.

What is needed is an arrangement whereby each of our MPs and AMs has enough time over the week to do their duties, but not so much that they can do little else. And we need a system of remuneration that rewards the work that is done, while making survival inside the Village/Bubble impossible on its own. We need compulsory job-share AMs and MPs.

Just think of it. In place of the 650-odd MPs we would have 1300, each of whom also had a life and a normal job outside their representational duties. You’d have MPs who worked as checkout assistants, mechanics and office workers. Instead of a narrow club of 60 AMs you’d have 120, who also ran small businesses, taught in schools, drove lorries and cut people’s hair. It would be good for us, as the trivia and froth of politics would soon be filtered out in favour of the stuff that mattered and could be done in half a week. And it would be good for them as, in a stroke, the ivory towers would be brought crumbling down. Our politicians wouldn’t have to protest their connectedness to real life and real people, they’d prove it by living it.

Of course there are problems with the idea. Some jobs would represent a conflict of interests, especially for Ministers. They could not seek to supplement their part-time MP/AM salary by sitting on the board of companies looking to gain from government contracts. Care would also be needed with certain public sector roles. Equally, it would not be right for the Commons to once more become comprised of lawyers and doctors, though this is perhaps now less likely anyway. We’d also need to work out how we could have two people elected to one position (and no, the AM/MP could not simply job share with their researcher) while retaining their equal legitimacy.

These are tricky issues. And the solution attacks the symptoms not the cause. A more far-reaching answer is for political parties to draw sustenance from a wider well, and for our democratic institutions to induce less institutionalism.  But compulsory job-sharing might just do the trick in lieu of these more organic reforms. The prize, after all, is considerable enough: a political class more obliged to be in-touch with the wider world, yet without allowing back the plutocracy of days gone by.

More, not fewer, politicians is a strange and unpopular call in these anti-politics times, but it could be the solution we’ve been looking for.