THAT noise you’ve heard over the weekend was the sound of four thousand sighs. For the first time in weeks, the 4,514 people who stood for election last Thursday evening were having their first couple of days away from the door step. The grueling six week long ordeal – which itself has been merely the end of a longer street campaign for most candidates – is finally over.
I don’t care how many tweets candidate send out about the “amazing reaction on the doorstep”, nobody sane really enjoys spending six to seven hours a day, seven days a week, wandering around housing estates knocking on doors *, reciting the same old lines and waiting patiently while the person behind the door explains why the kids round here are all feral, why the immigrants are getting all the council houses, and why on earth we’re spending all that money on the Royal family when you can’t even get a GP appointment these days, still less an appointment with a specialist.
Today, the lucky 650 who actually won their seat will head to Westminster. Ahead of them lie more foregone days-off, more endless travel back and forth to their seats, and the demanding expectation from their constituents that, unlike any other public servant, they must be on call all of the time.
Edmund Burke claimed in the 18th century that the public was owed “not his industry only” but primarily his or her judgment. In the 21st century, many MPs feel they are obliged to offer their industry, their weekends, their evenings, and their undivided loyalty to their constituents – or face the consequences. Put it this way: good luck to those MPs who decide that, yes, the new electricity pylon which is needed if we’re to increase supply and deliver on the country’s net zero plans is more important than the house prices in your local constituency.
Yet despite its unforgiving job description, the role of elected representative has once again received more than its fair share of applicants. Despite there being only a small chance of ever becoming a Minister, still less entering Number Ten, people still really, really want to do this.
Why? Why, in our cynical and perma-angry age, do we still manage to find enough people who are prepared to walk unarmed into the storm, all just to get the chance of becoming an elected representative, a job we know from polling grants you the immediate distinction of being considered one of the most distrusted people on the planet?
Over the last few weeks, I talked to a few friends from various parties who have been pounding the pavements over the last few months. I had two questions: “Why on earth do you do this?” and “No really, why on earth do you do this?”
“There is nothing quite as satisfying as being able to help individual constituents. Having that title MP matters and you can make a genuine difference to people every week,” said one old hand.
“When it comes to supporting better one-to-one relationships – between teacher and student, parent and child, or patient and medic – I think it’s policy that makes the difference,” said another.
“I was asked why not stand and I couldn’t come up with a good answer: once I was asked I just thought well, why not me? And if not me, who?” said another.
“In my job in the NHS I’ve been the recipient of so many decisions. I didn’t just want to have that for the rest of my life, I wanted to be in a position where I can be a decision-maker,” another (successful) candidate said.
In those answers you see the combination of factors that bring people into this game: some kind of compulsion to be part of something bigger; to make a mark; to step up to the plate; to be of service; to be more than just an ant.
The political life may be infuriating and exhausting and bloody hard work but there’s just something endlessly alluring about giving it a whirl. I haven’t stood for elected office but my time as a political advisor was the most interesting and sheer alive time of my working career. You meet the most interesting people on the planet. If you’re lucky, you are granted the power to do things. Hopefully some of them are not entirely terrible and you can say looking back that the country was not irreparably damaged by your influence. It is a noble craft.
It may be true that all political careers end in failure. Yet today shows that all political careers still begin in hope. And today, most of the 650 souls (there are always some bad eggs) who were elected last week will be arriving in Westminster hoping to achieve something special: for themselves, for their communities, and for the principles which – in almost every case – were the reason that pushed them over the edge.
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THEY do so with a major question mark hanging over Britain’s democratic health. Consider, first off, the biggest voting block on Thursday night: the people who didn’t.
19 million people all told, or 40% of the electorate, more than double the number who actively decided to vote in Sir Keir Starmer as our new Prime Minister. As a proportion of the voting public, turn-out was the second lowest since the late 19th century. Granted, the weather was poor and perhaps the inevitability of Labour’s victory may have depressed the vote but this is part of a long term trend: between 1945 and 1997, not a single election dipped below 70% turn out. Since then, not a single election has risen above it. Record numbers of people say they now “almost never” trust governments of any party to put the country above their party, nor tell the public the truth. Many of these people will have decided to self-disenfranchise themselves last week. Antipathy to politics – not just apathy for politics – is a serious problem.
And then there’s the message left by the people who did bother to go out. Nigel Farage’s populist movement Reform UK broke through, winning the vote of one in seven voters. The actual share of the vote captured by Labour and the Conservatives was the lowest on record. In short, the centre of British politics – by which I mean the ground occupied by political parties which speak the language of solutions, trade-offs, and choices in power – has rarely felt so wobbly.
Mr Farage is already aiming his fire at the First Past the Post system which, following this multi-party vote, has lost any claim to be proportional – as ever, he is showing his canny instinct for using reasonable points to further his agenda. The wider question is how and whether Prime Minister Starmer can hold off the challenge his movement presents. Can the centre hold? In his speech on Friday, Sir Keir acknowledged “the lack of trust” towards political parties, the need to “return politics to public service”, and the fact that only “actions, not words” can turn the public mood. “Politics can be a force for good”, he declared – a statement of the obvious which nevertheless does need to be said, with force.
The task in government, as he acknowledged, is to prove to a sceptical public that the “national renewal” which he has committed himself to doesn’t tail off “as soon as the cameras stop rolling”.
It is, at least, the right diagnosis. But as he says himself, to win over the public will be an immense task.
Step back and what is at stake is the notion of politics as a solution-based activity; one which grapples with competing priorities; that recognises the inevitability of imperfect decisions; that focuses on implementation as well as presentation; that understands it takes time for policies to have an effect and that not everything can happen overnight; and that seeks to communicate this complicated world to the rest of us.
And what’s in question is whether we – as a society – have the patience to listen, or whether we’ve just become too impatient, too cynical and too contemptuous of mainstream politics to bother. This election campaign has offered us a warning about the anger out there. We’ve seen it in the bullying endured by some candidates such as Labour’s Jess Phillips, over the war in Gaza. We’ve heard it too: symbolised by Richard Blackstock, the audience member in the BBC Question Time debate who snarkily asked Sir Keir and Rishi Sunak whether they were “the best this country has to offer” – to much mirth and applause from others. There is a risk of a doom loop here where rising public contempt leads to naked hostility to politicians which leads to fewer and fewer bothering to stick it out.
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It feels an interesting time, therefore, to be starting work today in a new job aimed specifically at defending and promoting the practice of politics at the University of Glasgow’s John Smith Centre. The Centre, which marks its 10 year anniversary this year, seeks to inspire and empower people – especially those who are under-represented in politics – to engage with and to enter politics in the UK. We believe politics matters. We hope to do our bit to create a better political culture.
I hope we can play our part as an advocate and a campaigner for a better form of politics which begins to restore some public faith – focused on serious solutions not aimless point-scoring; grounded in principled argument not personal abuse; and which recognises the value of activism not political ‘hobbyism’ – where our engagement with politics is marked solely by the amount of likes we’ve registered on our phone.
That’s to come. But today, as dozens of new MPs head to Westminster to commit themselves to public service, is a moment of optimism. Last week’s peaceful transfer of power, which has seen Conservatives hand over to Labour with generosity and good will, showed democracy is far from over. The public have done their job and shaken up power, showing it belongs to no-one. Let’s wish our new tribunes well.
*Actually some do. In his tribute to John Smith in 1992, the late Donald Dewar quoted from the University of Glasgow’s handbook from 1959 in which John Smith, aged 21, had written on behalf of the Labour club that “in this Club we think it valuable occasionally to indulge in political activities such as canvassing”. Mr Dewar noted wryly – and spoke for most politicians – by declaring: “Even in my post Presbyterian moments I would not describe canvassing as an indulgence – a penance perhaps, never an indulgence.”
