I’ve never been comfortable with the term ‘career politician’. It’s usually taken to mean someone who happily suppresses principles in pursuit of hard power and carries an implied criticism about the targets sincerity and/or integrity. It’s also a charge normally levelled by those who consider themselves without compromise when it comes to their own principles and is often laden with smug contempt. What’s more, the accuser often has a label of their own – ‘maverick’ or ‘rebel’ usually, the implication this time being that their principles are not for sale and their own integrity is beyond question.
There are of course politicians who deserve these labels but more often than not I think the media get these labels and criticisms the wrong way round. There’s no surer route to political celebrity than the MP who’s always ready and willing to criticise their own party (Tebbit, Widdecombe, Benn, Skinner etc.). Likewise with the politicians who hold fast to the banalities of adolescent politics, ready to ‘damn them all’ or champion some despot somewhere just because they share an enemy (Benn again, Galloway etc). Invariably these politicians wield no actual power whatsoever which is why their certainty about the world has never been dented. Provided they have a neat turn of phrase and can raise a chuckle or two at the same time these people are assured of a lengthy career.
Those they damn as unprincipled sell-outs however usually have a far harder time of it that anyone gives them credit for. It may be a trite observation but success in politics demands compromise. Principles and values are grand, important things but achieving anything worthwhile inevitably involves reconciling competing values and making very difficult decisions. Values and principles are worthless if they remain nothing but abstracts and while there may be some who reach the top by keeping their head down and saying the right things, many who make it do so while clinging fast to their principles and reconciling them with the need to actually achieve something.
I’d written this before I stumbled across Oliver Kamm’s excellent post today on the follies of Tony Benn – well worth a read.
There are of course politicians who deserve these labels but more often than not I think the media get these labels and criticisms the wrong way round. There’s no surer route to political celebrity than the MP who’s always ready and willing to criticise their own party (Tebbit, Widdecombe, Benn, Skinner etc.). Likewise with the politicians who hold fast to the banalities of adolescent politics, ready to ‘damn them all’ or champion some despot somewhere just because they share an enemy (Benn again, Galloway etc). Invariably these politicians wield no actual power whatsoever which is why their certainty about the world has never been dented. Provided they have a neat turn of phrase and can raise a chuckle or two at the same time these people are assured of a lengthy career.
Those they damn as unprincipled sell-outs however usually have a far harder time of it that anyone gives them credit for. It may be a trite observation but success in politics demands compromise. Principles and values are grand, important things but achieving anything worthwhile inevitably involves reconciling competing values and making very difficult decisions. Values and principles are worthless if they remain nothing but abstracts and while there may be some who reach the top by keeping their head down and saying the right things, many who make it do so while clinging fast to their principles and reconciling them with the need to actually achieve something.
I’d written this before I stumbled across Oliver Kamm’s excellent post today on the follies of Tony Benn – well worth a read.
Labels: Politics
9 Comments:
The folly in your post Liam is that Benn was castigated by the media when he was actually a member of a Labour government, not a critic on the backbenches. He was castigated not for being a critic or a celebrity, but for the same reason Kamm does so... because he espouses socialist principles.
Kamm's 'excellent piece' is pure nonsense. The stealth bomber is forgiven and excused because they are not targetting civilians, they are not terrorists... and because they have a UN mandate. This is the full weight Kamm puts forward as part of his 'convincing argument over seductive imagery'. Well, frankly, it ain't very convincing. If only Lt Calley had used that simple defence for his atrocities at Mai Lai.
Meither will be very comforting to the 40-50 civilians mowed down by a helicopter attack at a wedding party near Ramadi. Kamm is correct in one respect: Benn doesn't condemn the 'suicide bomber' neither does he actually condemn the 'stealth bomber'. He equates the two. They are both acting under orders from religous fundamentalists. Demanding a condemnation for whatever the last atrocity was is an old technique to try to stifle debate, succesfully used by the Reverend Paisley for decades.
Your comments, as with Kamm's are cheap and nasty.
Cassilis - you are a cool dude!
Anyone who links to SRV is on the right wave length. Personally, I would have included SRV's live version of Texas Flood but, hey!
We all miss Stevie.
He was castigated for falling into the second group I identify Bob - the smug 'damn them all' types who criticise anyone who shares their values but argues with their application. Your defence of Benn amounts to proxy defence of the others I mention, Galloway, Tebbit etc. - people whose principles are so isolated from ever having to be enacted that they lose all sense of reality.
'Silliness' as Kamm points out.
I think you miss part of the problem C . The career politician is one who who has never done anything else . He is also part of a media politco elite now almost exclusively drawn from Public schools and to an astonishing extent family influence. Politics is a career interchangeable with the City , Law and now advertising and media roles . This elite are not an identity with, but are naturally drawn to | Liberal Consensus , soi disant ,which although a small minority is strategically positioned to alter the face of life . Cameron Huhne and Clegg are obviously members but it should not be forgotten than in Scotland the Establishment is Labour. Brown went to the right school , had the right connections and is probably far more presumptive about his right to govern than Cameron could ever be despite ruling England like a Scots Raj , not to say giving it away to foreigners .
There are several problems with this . One is that having no independent career, the members of the Party will be supine when faced with the executives authority from undiluted financial dependency. This has been part of the drift from democracy to a Cabinet government accentuated by the Labour Party and the mental flaws of bossy boots brown who wished to use it to create a personal link between the “citizen” and ‘him’ embodying , the state .
As important is the want of experience in public life . I think of the many complaints I have about the Labour Party’s decade of pantomimic misrule is sheer incompetence. DEFRA, NHS Computers , Immigration records , The Home Office in general. There have been s many example that you literally cannot retain them all . Latterly the lost records loom large but surely the most abysmal and dispiriting clown show has been Tax Credits our great Leaders personal and typical contribution. Brown was warned that superimposing what was an American idea onto people used to filing returns, and with intrinsic flaws ,was a disaster in the making but he ignored the advice of the by now routinely superseded Civil Service . As we know the debt and chaos that ensued was all the more appalling in that the express aim of this Policy , to get people back into work , has utterly failed , if indeed there was really ever such an intention.( I suspect spreading dependency up income groups was the real agenda ). Another problem with the Career politician in contrast to the old ethos of public service. He is always looking for big ideas , a big splash, a new law and name for himself , the book , the chat shown …the successful career. This is why we suffer a geyser of plans , targets , legislation on every trivial matter imaginable or at least part of the reason.We shall see little “Statesmanlike inactivity” from the career politician. There is also a want of experience and the result is big useless government that does not work.
You can see how poltical life has floated from its purpose like a bubble from the bath by the language they use . An encrustation of jargon ”Narratives” and spin doctor coached blandishments are swapped like counters the purpose being to appear part of an impenetrable priesthood . This is a lie and an imposture and contributes to the shrinking relevance the issues voters who are leaving the \Parties in droves. Now of course they want the tax man to pay ie us.
In Islington I knew several career politicians in the early stages of getting gopher jobs in the HOP and sharpening their claws and filling CV with imaginative and fake lives ”In business ~” One I know e well and liked said to Me “ There is no other way , what am I supposed to do ?”. It is a structural problem and I do not think of these people as intrinsically evil nor do I blame the current incumbents for this state . David Cameron has conspicuously recognised and addressed the problem but it is not easy . The decline of the Unions has been a large factor and their replacement on the Labour ladder with a conveyor belt of identikit creeps of which the Millibands are the nadir ..or is it Ball ?
Europhiles , interested in multiplying professional opportunities , destroying democracies civil conversation and uninterested in the loyalties of voters tend to be the worst. Clegg in some ways not a complete prune is nonetheless staggeringly arrogant on this subject . Environmentalism attracts a similar sort with its tendency to be associated with new prescriptive laws and enforcement
You see career politicians as opposed to mavericks and egomaniacs and I sympathise with that point . I see a wider development for the worst that has drained the blood from our governance . I such an atmosphere , no wonder they are unconcerned that our country should become a Euro state and that the people and history of the country are betrayed . Mozart , Bach Shakespeare Michelangelo all worked for money , so did Churchill and there’s nothing wrong with that. The insidious wash of low level corruption in politics so ubiquitous it cannot be seen is something else though. Why should some men rise above their circumstances and others lapse into craven conformity ? As CS Lewis noted, mrola progress is not all one way . We empathise wonderfully compared to our forefathers we , also cowardly selfish and mean spirited .
I haven`t yet looked at the follies of Benn but judging from Piper`s splittle flecked computer screen it must be good .I suspect I have rather wandered from your point...never mind
Thanks for that tip C Kaam is good , if a tyopcal elitist swine. Picked up a few more good links as well.
Is Benn is saying Terorists are no worse than soldiers , when the motives of the coutry to not fit with his eccentric world view ?
On Enoch Powell reading the famous Rivers of Blood speech was all that was required for me to find him loathesome. No I am not a fan of these preening self lovers either.
Your blogg is beautiful. Can you send me about setting your blogg ?. All the best to you...
Interesting. Somewhere in the midst of all this is the need for conviction politicians, of all parties, who help to keep their own party on something like the
straight and narrow. For me the problem seems to lie in the fact that we have too many politicians who shut up when told. Then again there's always Dennis Skinner who perhaps should shut up, because much of what he peddles is just plain daft. His is the folly of a show off.
PS - I think you are most unfair to include Norman Tebbit except perhaps in his very recent past where I feel he has earnt the right to speak more frankly even than when he was an exceedingly forthright ,"Career Politician " if you like . Enoch Powell is equivelent to Tony Benn . Both useless
Cassie Interesting post. Career politicians are often tainted for making politics their career, as if they must be vain, driven to acquire power or just waiting to be corrupted. Most unfair. The best summary of politicians for me, was given by Estelle Morris in a radio interview. She recalled asking a colleague what Cabinet members were 'like'. The answer she received was 'The good news is, 'they're just like you and me'; the bad news is 'they're just like you and me'.
But when does a politician become a 'career' one? Is it after 10 years in the House? Or after five years as a minister? Or is it merely never having done another job?
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