The Spectator's Notes

16 May 2009

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

But the clinching point is that it is not a good idea to make entry into politics easy for anyone. Many of the most able people who come into it from business, diplomacy, the media etc, prove the most useless because they cannot get used to the sheer fatuity and indignities of democratic parliamentary politics. But that fatuity and those indignities are necessary, even good, parts of the system, because democratic politics must involve the clash of interests, the rage of faction, the exhaustion caused by complaining voters. It is not like a giant corporation or a government department, but like an endless voyage in a leaky boat in frequently stormy seas. Therefore the people who are really good at it are people who like the storm and will go bravely into it pretty much regardless of what the salary is.

What really does shock me is how much some MPs work. I heard Sir Patrick Cormack, for instance, saying that he gets into the office at seven in the morning, and is often there until ten at night. Why? What an unbelievable waste of time! One can have no sympathy at all with backbenchers who do so much. If it is mostly constituency business, it only shows how inefficient they are being and how poorly they are delegating to elected councillors. It is very unlikely nowadays that the work is on the proper scrutiny of legislation. That really does take long hours, but these have now been forbidden by the executive-controlled rules. So all those hours are just symptoms of self-importance. One only hopes that people like Sir Patrick are lying, and that really they sneak off to enjoy the enormous holidays (roughly four months of the year), or to earn money by honest extra-parliamentary methods.

I am writing this column, by the way, in Englefield, the astonishing Victorian palace of Richard Benyon, the Conservative MP for Newbury. Its demesne is so extensive that it encompasses an entire village. Richard assures me that he has never attempted to argue that Englefield is his second home. Many Benyons have been Members of Parliament. The one who built the present house sat in the Commons for 16 years, and never made a speech. Disraeli once asked him to reply to the Loyal Address, and he had to explain that he did not do that sort of thing. No pay, no allowances, no speeches: everyone was happy.

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Yorkshireman, Yorkshire

May 14th, 2009 7:21pm Report this comment

If 80% of laws are made in Brussels, MP's should not be paid more until they pass the legislation and no longer hand this responsibility to the undemocratic EU

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