There is a real issue

With people going through school to Uni, reading politics or public policy or something like that, then working in politics their whole careers.

I don’t know if you can age restrict in that way but I do like the idea that someone needs to have had a certain number of years working in a non political role first. You can always tell the ones who have and even when it’s ones I disagree with, the fact they have that real world experience means the conversation is wholly different from when you talk to someone whose experience of “real life” is entirely theoretical, because they’ve never really faced the everyday challenges most of us have to.

I also tend to think second jobs for MPs should be the norm, but in some form of public service: even taking round tea at the local hospital, or to traders at the local market, or prison visiting for example, would expose them to realities in a way reading statistics never can. There’d be challenges to making that work but if you could embed them in some role like that the novelty would wear off after a few months and it would mean a much more aware “political class”.

Ignorance of how people live is definitely a real problem in Whitehall and Westminster and an issue is that they don’t realise it, sadly. Our system is set up to give power to people (from all parties) with the kind of ego which assumes they understand a lot more than they really do. Empathy in terms of “working a room” is common there but empathy in terms of how policies actually feel to those affected by them is in extremely short supply (again, on all sides).

Posted By: Old Man, Dec 17, 08:39:49