Fishburn Hedges

01.06.2010

Icarus had nothing on David Laws. A month ago few outside the Westminster Village would have been able to identify the now former Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The Lib Dem fixer emerged from the shadows, had a brief moment in the limelight and then, for a fraction of the tax he pays annually on his personal fortune, he has returned to the shadows, taking with him one of the few reservoirs of genuine life experience on either of the front benches.

Laws, like Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Chris Huhne (whom I once worked for at The Independent) all have enjoyed real careers outside Westminster. This is in sharp contrast to the most of the leadership of both the other main parties. Though David Cameron worked for a while as PR man, this was a slight diversion from his career as a party apparatchik. Neither George Osborne nor William Hague have taken any similar diversion. Nor has either of the Millibands. Nor had Gordon Brown.

The sharp end of UK politics is increasingly being dominated by career politicians. This is not the same in France, where leaders swap from political life into business and back with alacrity. Nor in the US, where there is a strong culture of dedicating yourself to public service after a successful career in real life. In Italy they don't seem to even bother to give up business interests when moving into politics, but we'd hardly look to that model for inspiration.

There are lots of arguments for career politicians, but some very strong arguments against. One is that the vicious goldfish bowl existence of politics creates a certain sort of short term, back stabbing mentality that you rarely see anywhere else, other than prison. A former stellar businessman, turned politician, once told me that nothing in his business career had prepared him for the venality and mendacity of “people from my own side”. The other is the envy of politicians who see friends in the City, law or business making vast fortunes while those running the country live a far less comfortable existence. This, no doubt, goes a long way to explaining the expenses scandals.

Gordon Brown, for all his faults, spotted the shortage of real life experience at the top of a Labour Party that had been in power for a decade. That is why he went about enlisting his goats - “Government of all talents”. Alas for Gordon, who could emerge from a diamond mine clutching coal, his choice of goats often ended up biting him in the backside.

David Cameron's answer to an excess of apparatchiks  is to lean on some of the older wiser heads in the Tory ranks – Ken Clarke and Francis Maude for example. By dint of a long period of opposition they have gone out and gained experience elsewhere and, Cameron hopes and prays, can bring this experience to calm down the usual flow of piss and vinegar produced by newly minted ministers.

But Cameron was also lucky that he was forced into coalition with a party that is naturally staffed by people who work outside politics – largely because it is not wired for Government – the Lib Dems. So you had former Brussels lobbyists, Shell economists, journalists, bond ratings analysts and City traders joining the front bench and bringing their perspectives from outside the Westminster village to bear, for better or worse.

Now Laws has gone, his place is being taken by Danny Alexander, whose job prior to parliament was as PR man to the Scottish Lib Dems and before that as PR man to the pro-euro lobby group whose main strategy seemed to be to get as close to Tony Blair as possible. In other words a career politician. Oh well.

Posted by Jason Nisse