Politicians should challenge the more fogeyish grumbles about their trade. Cabinet government is not always better than the Blairite sofa version. There is more to running a department than trusting civil servants. Nostalgia for a golden age of Parliament, when mps shamed the lickspittles of today with their unwhip-pable iconoclasm, is simply ahistorical.rnNor is the professionalisation of politics necessarily to be lamented. In truth, mps who graduated from Westminster's back rooms tend to know their way around policy and bureaucracy, one big reason why they rise to high office. Colleagues from "the real world" (as the private sector is habitually called, as though the governance of the country were some frivolous Narnia) often flop as politicians.
展开▼
