Sunday 22 October 2023
The death of politics
Derrick Berthelsen has a useful Critic piece which represents our failing political system as an example of failing homeostasis. It's a useful way to express the familiar problem of elites failing to understand the importance of feedback between their class and the rest of society.
Homeostasis and the death of politics
Ignore feedback mechanisms at your peril
Homeostasis, according to Britannica, is “any self-regulating process by which biological systems tend to maintain stability whilst adjusting to conditions that are optimal for survival”.
Whilst stability appears to be a steady state, in reality it is anything but: “the stability attained is actually a dynamic equilibrium, in which continuous change occurs yet relatively uniform conditions prevail.”
How does the system know what and where to change, in order to reach and maintain homeostasis? “Any system in dynamic equilibrium tends to reach a steady state, a balance that resists outside forces of change. When such a system is disturbed, built-in regulatory devices respond to the departures to establish a new balance; such a process is one of feedback control.”
The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how out of touch our MPs are. For example -
According to Parliament, today only three per cent of MPs in the House of Commons have any experience of blue-collar work. In numerical terms, the number of MPs who had working class jobs before entering politics can today be counted on two hands, whilst conversely nearly one in five MPs have only ever worked in politics straight from University.
And this reminder that both major UK political parties are relatively uniform in their make-up.
As Professor David Runciman explained it in his piece “The key flaw in our democracy: MPs don’t represent the people”:
This points to the need for a more profound reform of how parliament represents the people. The problem goes deeper than partisan divides: neither of the main parties is able to bridge wider social divisions because both parties are relatively uniform in their make-up
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7 comments:
It's not just that: very few of them have run anything. Once upon a time many MPs had run a business, or an estate, or a regiment, or a professional practice, or a trade union, or a school. They'd run something that brought them into contact with realities and with a variety of people.
As for the blue collar thing: who was the last impressive politician from a blue collar background? Ernie Bevin, maybe. But he was aeons ago. More recently Norman Tebbit, though it was his parents who were blue collar, not him. For the last couple of generations young Ernie or Norman would have been sent off to university.
You mighty ask how many PMs we've had from a poor background. Apparently we can ignore Lloyd George: he exaggerated how modest his background was. I suspect we're left with Ramsay Mac and John Major. Not much of a haul, is it?
Homeostasis ... just trips off the tongue, that word. Now, how to employ it in posts? 🤔
My proposal is for there to be a lower age limit for MPs, no one under the age of 50. That way you eliminate the uni/spad/MP conveyor belt. Make politics something you can only do when you've done something else in life. Had a family, had a career, started a business, or just worked somewhere for 30 years. It would at least make MPs people who have achieved something in life. After all we aren't going to vote for candidates who live with their parents aged 50, or who have done a series of dead end jobs. By 50 a person will either be something of a success or a failure, life will have chewed them up a bit and spit them out, for better or worse. Also the narcissists and borderline psychopaths won't want to wait that long to get their hands on power, they'll have gone off to terrorise other poor people in another line of work. And won't want to take the pay cut into politics aged 50, and have only 10-15 years to maybe make it to the top. Everyone at 50 has a bit better idea of who they are, and how the world works than people aged 25-35, which is the age politics wonks tend to start their careers. Older MPs would also be less biddable by whips, as they'd be less in need of the money. A person whose kids have left home and whose mortgage has only a few years to run will be able to afford a lot more principles than a person who has a family to support and a big mortgage to pay.
dearieme - I agree and one of the results of never having run anything is that ministers have no idea how to run their ministry. Due to lack of experience, permanent secretaries seem to run rings round most of them because ministers haven't acquired the organisational insights they need to challenge anything effectively.
James - just scatter it around in one or two posts, like confetti. Only in homeopathic quantities though :)
Sobers - I couldn't agree more. We have an absurd collection of MPs who are too young, too inexperienced, too sheltered from the realities of life or they haven't had the daft ideals knocked out of them because they never will - Corbyn for example.
Voters must shoulder much of the blame. They can check and compare the age and experience of candidates but obviously most don't. A minimum age of 50 would help rectify that though, for the reasons you give.
Be careful what you wish for.
Baron Martin of Springburn, aka Michael John Martin, aka Gorbals Mick, comes to mind.
We need to be wary of Runciman's point about MPs "not representing" the people, and not conflate statistical representation according to certain criteria with political representation where my preferences are translated into policy. Many people like me (plate-glass university social science educated, ex-public sector, geographically mobile) have horrible views and need to be deported. Suella Braverman, though, seems to talk sense even though she and I are personally very different. We just want people who listen to us...
Doonhamer - yes, passive rules wouldn't filter out all the duds.
Sam - I agree, we just want people who listen. Plus major media outfits which listen, particularly the BBC.
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