How to get better MPs; or Why things were better in the past

You have, I am sure, heard the plaintive cries: politicians nowadays - a bunch of pygmies! Useless, drab, uninspiring, hopeless! How we can get better MPs? 

The problem seems to be this: there are plenty of MP-adjacent people (spads, for example, and various public policy sorts) who are bright and able, and generally interested in the job, but the job itself looks so off-putting that they don't go for it. How can we change that? 

This old chestnut came up recently on an online platform (not Twitter, but let's say Twitter). There was some talk about pay, but a couple of intelligent people pointed out that the bigger issues are matters such as losing your job overnight or being less employable after doing it.

Now, we need to be clear that, in a functioning democracy, there must always be the possibility of going overnight from running the country to being essentially a nobody. That's a feature, not a bug. But it's a fair point that being removed from power should not mean personal disaster, and it's also true that if the job requires people to accept the risk of personal disaster then it will (a) attract some pretty odd people and (b) incentivise them to do some pretty odd things once they get power (for fear of that very disaster).

Were MPs better in the past? I don't know. But it seems to me that there were a variety of features of political life in place a generation or so ago (now, I'm afraid, routinely roundly despised) that mitigated these worries about personal disaster. If MPs were better, perhaps these are some of the reasons why. Let me take you through them (below the break).

(1) Second jobs. There are lots of good justifications for MPs having second jobs, but here's just one: you might not be an MP forever and having a foot in another world can help you with future employment. Think of it as not dissimilar to "keeping in touch" days during maternity leave - a way of maintaining connections with a world seems very distant from your day-to-day life, but one to which you will probably return.

(2) The House of Lords. You can go from being a minister of the Crown, perhaps even a Cabinet Minister, to nothing overnight. But, for a select few, that might not be the end of your career in Parliament. The possibility of a second political career, either as a full working peer (think of Lord Cameron) or as an elder statesperson contributing expertise and considered thoughts (think of Lord Adonis) is surely a positive thing to dangle before a young, public-spirited, MP-adjacent type?

(3) Respect. It's a bit of a stretch, perhaps, to think that MPs have ever been terribly highly regarded, but a certain amount of respect and deference has surely been lost. When we consider who these "good MPs" are that we are missing, we should think not only of bright young things in think tanks but also of those older public-spirited types who sometimes turn up as independent candidates at by-elections or mayoral elections. The local businessman, keen supporter of the local rugby club, brass band or museum, who has achieved a great deal and made money, and now wants to give back to his community and his country: why should he not regard being an MP as another public service worthy of respect, just as he regards chairing the board of governors at the local school or raising money for the maternity wing of the local hospital? Or the senior academic or public sector worker, who has risen to the top of her career and now sits as a magistrate and runs various professional bodies: should she not regard being an MP as a Good Thing? But I suspect both of them feel that they might end up tarnished and despised as a result of doing it. 

(4) Expenses. People get worked up about iPads and earpods and so on, but the real value of MP's expenses is that it funded (and I assume still funds) the interest on a mortgage on a second home. The justification for supporting a second home is obvious in a democracy with a constituency MP system; the possibility of making capital gains is a pleasant side-effect. The traditional wider laxity with MPs' expenses helped cushion the difficulties of an MP's life and provide for their futures (until that system backfired spectacularly and made their lives much more unpleasant). 

(5) Colonial and European appointments. There's a bizarre idea that the Brexit campaign was motivated by some kind of love for the Empire. Of course, precisely the opposite is true: it's the love of "punching above our weight", "having a seat at the table" and so on that motivates the pro-EU campaigns in our country. (I exaggerate a little, but if you want to read an interesting and nuanced account of this issue, from a proper - and pro-EU - historian, then I highly recommend this.) In any event, the sort of people who most love this kind of "punching" and "sitting at important tables" are MPs and wannabe MPs. When their domestic political careers developed not necessarily to their advantage, Chris Patten got to run Hong Kong and Peter Mandelson got to be a European Commissioner; but neither is an option now.

(6) Finally, fewer constituency duties. Some anecdotes:

All very shocking to modern eyes, no doubt, but imagine how much more attractive life as an MP would be if you could be sure of spending all your weekends with your friends and family (or even with your MP-ing job) rather than with your constituents. 

I have put this as my last point not because it is unimportant but rather because I have been concentrating on life after MP-ing rather than conditions during: I am thinking of the foreseeable lifetime prospects of someone thinking of entering politics. (If you want factors that would increase the attractiveness of an MP's life "during" then more money and a reduced risk of being stabbed seem like good starting places.) But this kind of reduced stress during the job is relevant to the after(MP)life too: by maintaining a more normal life, based in one place (rather than "dividing one's time" in the manner of an author's bio), it must surely give prospective confidence that one's life outside politics will continue; one is not "marrying" the job in the same way.  

What can we can take from this list? One can't turn the clock back, much as we might wish otherwise. I am not recommending that we acquire some new colonial possessions simply in order to produce an enhanced career path for budding politicos. But, in all seriousness, I would suggest looking at the list above with a critical eye and considering how the same effects could be achieved today. Perhaps we are stuck with expecting MPs to be visible in their constituencies: but could they be provided with more office support there? And, while we don't have so many colonial appointments as once was the case, the state still has numerous fiefdoms that need leaders. Let me take an example: Rachel Reeves. She has worked in the Bank of England and is likely to be Chancellor of Exchequer. It seems to me that she will have a good CV for becoming Governor of the Bank of England one day. But somehow, I think, we regard that appointment as too political. Why? And why shouldn't the Attorney General become a senior judge, almost as a matter of course, should he or she not want to pursue a political career after electoral defeat or political reverse? 

The final moral is the familiar one - no less important for being familiar - that you should pause a little before attacking existing institutions, traditions and habits: you have to be a very clever political engineer to know which walls are the load-bearing ones and which are merely decorative features.