There’s also a voluntary Lobbying Register, managed by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, which “individual lobbyists and organisations” are encouraged to join. You can explore it here. For instance, if you run a search on Mark Oaten — the former Lib Dem MP — you get this entry. Try searching for David Cameron, however, and you get zero results.
Neither the legislation nor self-regulation is achieving the transparency that the former Prime Minister promised in the 2010 speech, when he pledged to make “sure that ex-ministers are not allowed to use their contacts and knowledge — gained while being paid by the public to serve the public — for their own private gain.”
It’s not just ex-ministers, of course. At any one time there are thousands of lobbyists at work in and around the Palace of Westminster, many of whom used to work there in a non-lobbying capacity. They’re drawn from all ranks — from ex-researchers right up to ex-premiers.
Some are a nuisance. Others are useful. A few are brilliant — a genuine loss to proper politics. But all are tolerated. That’s not just out of respect to fallen comrades, but self-interest too.
That’s partly because there’s no career structure in politics. At every turn, one’s path is strewn with sudden exits. Most professions have more room at the bottom than the top, but it’s hard to think of any other career that’s more likely to chew you up and spit you out at every stage. The music industry might be the best comparison. There’s more than one reason why “politics is show business for ugly people”.
It’s even worse for those who exit politics in middle age. I’m not sure who said it first, but there’s nothing as “ex” as an ex-MP.
And that’s why the public affairs industry plays such an indispensable role in our political system. Unlike most other employers, it rewards public service. Indeed, the longer and more senior that service, the greater the reward. As annoying as some lobbyists might be, their presence is also reassuring. Those in Westminster’s land-of-the-living know that, one day, they too might need a place in the political afterlife.
It’s therefore vital that we establish a clearer boundary between the two worlds. As in Christian theology, the living must stay on one side of the great divide and the dead on the other.
That means providing long-lasting careers for politicians — not so much for their sakes, but for ours. We’ve had a professional permanent government — i.e. the civil service — for more than a century. It’s high time that we ended amateur hour on the political side of public administration too. After all, our MPs are responsible for the scrutiny of legislation, the stewardship of hundreds of billions of pounds and for life-and-death decisions affecting millions of people.
If — like other countries — we had local governments that could truly shape the development of their communities, parliamentary committees that could propose and pass legislation, and think tanks with the permanence and heft of academic institutions; then there might be more to politics than the greasy pole of ministerial preferment. We’d be able to reward public service with the purpose and respect it deserves.
In any comparable field, we’d demand decades of experience from those at the top. Not politics though. An individual like David Cameron went from a job in PR to become an MP in 2001. Within four years he was Leader of the Opposition. And within nine, Prime Minister. Six years later he was out of politics altogether, with half his adult life still ahead of him. How can that possibly end well?
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