Being an MP is a dog's life. We can't fix politics with the current system

Telegraph

6 days ago

Imagine that you are a high earning, public spirited business person who wants to do more for your community and country. You mull seeking to become an MP. Is it worth it?
You ponder the prospect. You'd take a substantial pay cut: an MP's annual salary is £93,904. That's far above than the average – MPs are in the top five per cent of earners – but way below your own mid-six figure salary. That would matter less were you free to earn outside the Commons. But restrictions are increasingly tight and scrutiny increasingly exacting.
And not just for you. Your spouse and children will become 'politically exposed persons' – unable perhaps to open a bank account, or at least face delays and difficulties when applying for a mortgage or insurance.
Life will become more challenging for you and for them. Your children may have a hard time at school. Your spouse may be targeted on social media. You yourself may be trolled, stalked or even assaulted – and two MPs have been murdered in the last decade. And in age of electoral volatility, holding your seat is far from guaranteed
It might all be worth it were the work rewarding. But much of what you will do as a constituency MP would have been done by a local councillor until fairly recently. And the whips will want you to be numbingly on message twenty four seven, negotiating gotcha interviews with bland lines to take.
I'm not claiming that every talented person who wants to enter the Commons makes this calculation in detail. But he or she will undoubtedly sense the flavour and taste of all the
above: the perception that serving as an MP is now low status – and that the odds against making an impact in Westminster are long. The consequences are systemic.
It's commonplace to claim that politics is broken and the system has failed. But it seems to me that the source of the problem isn't a Blob made up of activist judges, an unreformed civil service, rampant quangocrats, and outdated international agreements - problematic though all these are. It's a failing Parliament: specifically, a failing Commons.
This week, Policy Exchange published my paper on the future of the Right in Britain. In it, I argue that the Right should return to essentials: enterprise, ownership, defence. So far, so obvious.
But I found myself haunted, as I wrote it, by the consequences of change. When the right was in opposition during the 1970s, the main question for it was what: what should be done about inflation, decline, and the power of the unions? In the mid-2000s, it was how: how should the right detoxify itself and gain a hearing from voters. Today, it's whether: that's to say, whether the right, and those who would once have served under its colours in Parliament, is giving up on the Commons altogether.
And no wonder. MPs who replicate the work of local councillors are unlikely to have time and perhaps the inclination to scrutinise legislation properly. The slight decline in the number of Acts of Parliament over the past 25 years has been offset by a rise in total page count - and in the number of statutory instruments.
Moreover, there has been a rise in skeleton or framework legislation. And this bigger legislative burden has been
accompanied by reduced scrutiny time in the Commons – with more Bills programmed and fast-tracked, a growth in Henry VIII powers, and limited capacity to scrutinise secondary legislation.
Furthermore, MPs who are energetic constituency functionaries – expert at responding to e-petitions, arranging local photo-ops, fixing their social media feeds or making brief speeches in Westminster Hall – won't necessarily provide enough competent ministers to go round.
My paper argues that countries with ageing populations, low growth and high immigration tend to be low trust societies, and contends that trust in politicians tends to rise – as in 1997, 2010 and 2019 – when they are seen to stand for a clear change of direction: New Labour, the Coalition, getting Brexit done.
I go on to make the case for boosting small business, increasing home ownership, cutting immigration and strengthening citizenship, stronger defence, helping families (the Conservatives were frightened off families' policy during the early 1990s – and have scarcely dared touch it since).
Whether you agree with this programme or not, little or none of it will be delivered by a Parliament in its present condition. Talent on the right will either spurn politics altogether or, more likely, flourish outside the Commons in an entertainment complex of performative social media, substacks, subscription TV and YouTube channels. And why not – since it offers more money, less hassle and higher status?
Dominic Cummings, Go for Growth, Fix Britain – there is a growing, critical mass of actors who recognise that the
country isn't working. But too few have grasped that the problem of politics is at root a problem of Parliament – requiring radical reform of the Commons.
The romantic in me yearns for a chamber with fewer restrictions on outside earnings, less onerous reporting requirements and, elsewhere, empowered local government – with MPs thus able to concentrate again on national issues.
Such change might be enough to lure high earning business people back to the Commons. Though it could still be that the other disincentives to entry are still too daunting. And that voters have become accustomed to MPs as full-time constituency workers.
The realist in me mulls a different solution. If voters want such MPs, they must have them. And take Ministers out of the Commons entirely. Would it be so different from what's already happening? Gordon Brown appointed outsiders to the Lords as Ministers – Digby Jones, Ara Darzi, Mervyn Davies. Rishi Sunak made David Cameron a peer and Foreign Secretary. As I look across the Lords chamber, the Labour front bench is packed with non-political expertise: Peter Henry, Patrick Vallance, James Timpson.
Such appointments raise big questions about accountability. And taking the executive out of the legislature, whatever else it might be, would mean constitutional upheaval. But either way, we can't go on as we are.