the ministerial gene pool

There is now a distinct impression emerging in British politics that the current collection of our political leaders - of all parties - is of very low quality. A clear reason may simply be, of course, that they are too young. They simply could not have picked up enough political experience to be able to govern soundly. The fact that they tend to listen to adisers who are even younger and have less exeprience only serves to exacerbate the problem. But I'd like to explore the problem a little more deeply. In periods when politics in Britain has been more ideological, more partisan in nature, it was logical and understandable that leaders should emerge from the parties and from parliament, for those were the places where political ideas and policies were being honed and developed. I would characterise the 1960s - 80s plus the New Labour era as appropriate examples of this. In the past ten to fifteen years, however, British politics has beceome increasingly managerial and technical in nature. How we deal with the financial crisis and the recession is a classic example of this, as is the issue of the freeing up of labour markets by dismantling employment protection legislation. Indeed the conflict over employment rights is particularly interesting. John Prescott - an ideological politician if ever there was one - sees it as a moral question, an issue of rights and personal welfare. Miliband, Balls and the coalition, on the other hand, argue about the economic merits of such a policy, ignoring the effect it might have on workers and their families. So certainly all current leaders can be described very much as 'managerial' in style. The fact that they tend to use think tanks, policy units and advisers to devlop policies is, therefore, perfectly logical. Yet, despite this, we are locked into the traditional mode of leadership selection. By limiting the potential field to MPs from the governing party who have the ambition to join the government, we find only a couple of hundred candidates, many of whom have no relevant experience. Contrast this with the US or French presidents. They have a much freer hand in selecting governments. Indeed the US President MUST look outside the Legislature as the Constitution does not allow individuals to sit in both the executive and the Congress. How much talent are we ignoring through the anachronistic notion that ONLY MPs should be considered for ministerial posts ? To be fair, it is possible to ennoble extra-parliamentarians (Andrew Adonis is a good example of the success of this device)and place them in the government. Even then, though we have the absurd practice of not allowing such ministers to appear in the House of Commons. And it is rarely used. To take a darwinian perspective on this, we have an extremely limited gene pool from which to find political leaders and any biologist will tell you that this practice will lead to too many inherited defects. To pursue the metaphor further, we also have a Conservative leadership who come LITERALLY from such a pool, as so many were brought up in families who are members of what we might call the 'petit aristocracy'.