Politics as stepping-stone

James Purnell, former Work & Pensions Secretary is going to become the BBC's "director of strategy and digital" on a a salary of £295,000 - and no doubt worth every penny. This suggests we should change the way we think of Westminster politics.

Purnell is continuing a trend for quite young people to leave politics for more lucrative work: Ruth Kelly, John Hutton, David Miliband (perhaps temporarily) and even Tony Blair. Whereas politics used to be something one undertook after gaining experience in other careers, it is now a stepping stone, something youngish people do as a means to bigger money*.

Such a path is understandable. Politics offers someone of average-to-decent ability a chance to manage multi-billion pound budgets at a younger age than they'd often get in ordinary business. Sure, they might not accomplish much whilst they are in government. But as Marko Tervio has shown, employers often prefer the mediocrity with a track record to the potential star without, so "Secretary of State for Work & Pensions" looks better on the CV than a string of competently-done junior management jobs.

Once we we regard politics as a means whereby 30- and 40-somethings gain experience before going onto better things, then several things follow:

1. We should be more forgiving of mistakes in both policy and execution. These guys are only learning their craft, so mistakes are inevitable. Politics is youth team football, not the Premier League. Sure, they're making mistakes with our money, but hey-ho.

2.Political reporting - in the sense of who's up, who's down - is not important, any more than is the matter of who becomes deputy assistant marketing director at Amalgamated Aerosoles. Of course, policy matters, as do questions of values about how we are governed. But individual ministers don't matter; they're just passing through.

3. We should expect politics to be biased towards crony capitalism and managerialist ideology not because these are goods way of running the country, but because they are ways in which ministers increase their chances of getting lucrative work later.

* Actually, the distinction isn't so sharp. It was quite common in the 50s for men to become MPs in their early 30s, and ministers have often taken directorships after leaving politics - although many of these were sinecures to subsidize retirement rather than, as now, a career advancement.

Comments

[Tonylo]

Another thought, maybe democracies are pretty good at calculating the right salary for it's 'managers'. Whereas companies are less competent at this process. In a world where management is overvalued it's quite natural that there are richer pickings in the boardroom.

OTOH companies are probably pretty good at estimating the wage of a burger flipper, I'm less sure collectivists are. Maybe unions would be better off and more popular by concentrating on the salaries of the management rather than the workers.

[shake zula, the mic ruler, old schooler]

"We should be more forgiving of mistakes in both policy and execution. These guys are only learning their craft, so mistakes are inevitable. Politics is youth team football, not the Premier League. Sure, they're making mistakes with our money, but hey-ho."

Chris, you must be being sarcastic here. We should be harsher on them if anything, because they are manifestly egotistical careerists who care more about their (long term) pecuniary gain than the governance of Britain.

Argh!

[Ralph Musgrave]

Also, given the large proportion of GDP allocated to public spending, and the all powerful nature of governments nowadays, compared to a hundred or so years ago, it’s important for corporations to have people who have decent contacts in government. And no doubt the latter “contacts” are rewarded with brown envelopes full of cash – though the bribery is probably a little more subtle than that.

Capitol Hill is crawling with bankers because the quickest way for a U.S. bank to make money is to have the law changed in its favour: easier than the boring old business of accepting deposits and making loans.

[Chris E]

"OTOH companies are probably pretty good at estimating the wage of a burger flipper"

At least in the UK, employment of burger flippers are usually being subsidised in some indirect way by the government

[Keith]

You seem rather relaxed about corruption and our National moral decline.

[Anonymous]

So, Pretty Boy Purnell is to receive £295k of licence payer's cash each year.

I am glad I have opted out of watching live TV and so am not required to pay for a TV licence.

£295k is far too much money to pay him. He would struggle to earn £40k in the private sector

[bella gerens]

Sure, it's only our money they're wasting during playtime, hey-ho.

I'm choosing to read that as tongue-in-cheek.

[Jeremy Scott Wings]

Reliable supplier, best source and discount price.

[Nigel Sedgwick]

In the machinations of government, I wonder whether there is any relevance in the age disparity between ministers and senior civil servants: age being one aspect of experience (though by no means the only one).

Best regards

[pablopatito]

@Anonymous. £40k? Really? How many people who get Firsts in PPE at Oxbridge only make £40k in the private sector, regardless of ability?

He was also Head of Corporate Planning at the BBC before going into politics. I'm not sure how much that paid but I suspect it was a fair bit.

I'm not sure he's a great example, Chris. I suspect his degree is just as influential on his private sector wage as his political career, rightly or wrongly.

[aragon]

A member of the Guilded Class moves from Guilded Job to Guilded Job.

Business as usual in Britain.

[aragon]

Gilded not Guilded !

[FromArseToElbow]

Re Ralph Musgrave's comment: "given the large proportion of GDP allocated to public spending, and the all powerful nature of governments nowadays, compared to a hundred or so years ago, it’s important for corporations to have people who have decent contacts in government".

The relationship of government and corporations is pretty much unchanged since the growth of the latter in the 16th/17th centuries. The idea that Victorian/Edwardian Britain had low public spending is as much of a myth as the nightwatchman state. To maintain this you need to ignore the Empire, which had a massive government apparatus (despite the popular trope of the lone district commissioner) in symbiotic relationship with corporations.

Chris's suggestion of a generational shift also needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Well-connected young talent have often started their careers in politics, famously via rotten boroughs or multi-member constituencies. Churchill was 25 when first elected an MP, after paying hid dues in imperial service. Purnell was born and raised in London but ended up parachuted into a safe seat in the North West.

In some ways, Purnell is atypical in moving on to a public corporation rather than the private sector (and specifically finance), though the media more generally remain as much of a lucrative field for politicians as they did in Churchill's heyday. What's consistent is the establishment regard for clever generalists over qualified specialists.

As pablopatito notes, Purnell was peviously Head of Corporate Planning at the BBC (his qualifications for that were Balliol, a stint as Tony Blair's researcher, and a research fellowship at the IPPR thinktank). As anyone who has been involved in corporate planning knows, this is a species of institutional politics, with minimal technical basis. I doubt he's been re-recruited because of his skill with spreadsheets.

[George Carty]

One of the most egregious examples of this kind was former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who instituted a phase-out of nuclear energy in German, and was rewarded for it by Gazprom to the tune of €500k per year once he left office.

Dirty traitor...