THE saddest thing – all right, the only sad thing – about the Derek Conway affair is that nobody is in the least surprised. Even the indignation is muted. We just shrug our shoulders and say: "There they go again."
No doubt this is monstrously unfair to all those members of our parliaments who are souls of probity and would never rip off the public. But that's how it is. Respect for politicians is at a low ebb and we scarcely expect them to behave well. Mr Conw
ay's behaviour merely confirms our prejudices. The only remarkable thing is that he thought he could get away with it. But even that's not uncommon. Remember that Liberal Democrat MSP whose claim for a mileage allowance was so big that it was suggested he might have driven round the circumference of the globe.
Some account for what appear to be deteriorating standards among our politicians by the fact that we now have a political class composed of men and women who have been politically active since they were at university and have had no experience of anything but political work. Others, more charitably, wonder if standards of behaviour are indeed lower than they used to be, and argue that they appear to have declined only because politicians are subject to closer scrutiny than used to be the case. There is something to be said for this view. On the other hand, there is now so much money sloshing about the political world that it would be extraordinary if there weren't a fair number of tarry-fingered folk taking advantage of this largesse.
The argument that we are now governed by a new political class, isolated from the rest of us by lack of experience outside politics, has been forcefully and to some extent persuasively made by several commentators, notably Peter Oborne, author of The Rise of the Political Class. It can't be dismissed out of hand, though one may remark that Mr Conway, a self-made businessman, doesn't belong to such a class. Nevertheless it does exist.
But it's new only in its composition. There were full-time professional politicians as far back as the 18th century. They were the governing class, some by reason of birth and predilection, others because they were the necessary "men of business", the Tapers and Tadpoles of Disraeli's novels. For many, politics was a hereditary profession.
Obviously this was the case with members of the House of Lords, but there were hereditary politicians in the Commons, too. The younger William Pitt could scarcely have become chancellor of the exchequer at the age of 23 and prime minister a year later if he hadn't been the son of the great war minister and if he hadn't had extensive family connections in politics. His rival Charles James Fox entered the Commons at the earliest permissible age; his father, Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, was a thoroughly professional politician who more or less lawfully made himself immensely rich as Paymaster of the Forces, building Holland House out of the proceeds.
In one respect, certainly, politics in the 21st-century bears more resemblance to the politics of the 18th than to that of the intervening two centuries. Now, as then, people may go into politics with the intention of becoming rich. Sir Robert Walpole, sometimes styled the first prime minister, acquired one of the finest art collections in the country through the profits of his political career. Our most recent prime minister, Tony Blair, is set to make more money in 12 months as an ex-prime minister than he did in ten years in Downing Street. Clearly, time spent in politics can be a sound investment. You get to pick a pocket or two – quite legally, of course.
Politics is not a trade for amateurs. It rarely has been. We have always had a governing class and those who come late to politics, after experience in business or some other profession, have rarely reached the top, rarely proved themselves adept at the political game. Gladstone once said that you might as well start training for the ballet at 45 as start training for the Cabinet at that age. Successful politicians, in his opinion, were, as the historian GM Young put it: "Men trained from youth in the business of government by the 'invisible education' of home, of school, of the universities, and by the open conflicts of the House".
It may well be that the last of these was the most important, and that many of the faults and weaknesses of today's governing class stem from their disregard, even distaste, for the "open conflicts" of parliamentary democracy.
There was, admittedly, a long period – extending indeed over much of the 20th century – when politicians generally had extensive and important experience before they entered parliament. But this was not of their choice, and the experience was characteristically experience of war, not of business. From the 1920s to the early Eighties most Cabinet ministers, both Labour and Conservative, had served in the Forces. The so-called post-1945 consensus was formed by common experience rather than ideology. One American politician said he could trust Labour's chancellor of the exchequer, Denis Healey, because Healey had been a beach-master during the Anzio landings.
Things are different now and the experience of the political class is narrower than it was. They are different, too, from the 18th century (despite resemblances) because generally men then went into politics because they were already important in their locality; now men and women embark on a political career in order to become important. No doubt it's desirable that they should have interests beyond politics, even some unpolitical experience. But too much shouldn't be made of this. Politics is a trade and one that is learned on the job. Amateurs may play a part, but the real work, much of it tedious, will always be done by the professionals.
There's no point calling for un-professional politicians, or complaining about the existence of a political class, for there will always be such a class. Call instead for honest politicians and for men and women with the ability to imagine and understand the feelings, aspirations, concerns and anxieties of the people they are elected to govern. Crying for the moon? Perhaps.
