Authenticity is a key ingredient for all kinds of professions. The American singer, Jennifer Lopez, wanted to prove she was 'real' in her song Jenny from the Block, though this assertion that she was a humble child of the Bronx was rather undermined by a video showing her billionaire lifestyle with her then partner Ben Affleck. Our elected parliamentarians also need to show that they are real and need to maintain a close identity with those who elect them. In this they have failed miserably. The public outcry at the large number of MPs involved in the recent scandal over expenses highlights once more just how great the distance is in this country between the governor and the governed.
Duck house, moats and flipping
That anyone could have thought the cleansing of a moat, the flipping of houses and the incredible purchase of a duck house was anything other than just plain wrong shows how far removed professional politicians have become from the lives of the people they serve, and that their rules are not the same as those of their voters.
While many MPs may well deserve punishment, there are some inherent dangers in the media frenzy that this has whipped up. The first is a general feeling, expressed in many opinion polls, that MPs are 'all the same' and 'all at it'. The truth is far from this and Westminster still has many honourable members. But the tainting of our political life has opened up another trend, that being the celebrity culture, so loved by our tabloid newspapers, moving into mainstream politics.
The obvious problem with this is that so-called 'celebrities' are often just as distant from the average citizen as MPs. Unlike the A-list star, most of us expect to pay for things rather than simply asking shops to give us goods in order that we endorse them with our personal brand. The odd thing is that many aspire to join this celebrity culture, precisely because 'they' live a glittering lifestyle and are apart from 'us'. It is the difference of the celebrity lifestyle that is its pull. The expenses scandal has shown that it is sameness that we want from our politicians.
But many believe that the Westminster parliament has too many politicians who have spent most of their working life facing inward toward Whitehall and Westminster and have far too little experience of sameness, or of real life. The outpourings of numerous thinktanks do not produce fully-rounded human beings all of the time.
Local politicians who live and work in their communities
But if Parliament is a closed world, and the 'celebrities' whose existences are featured in magazines such as Hello are also living a somewhat unreal existence, then who should we turn to? We need ordinary people who live real lives engaging in mainstream politics. You could do far worse than look at local councillors, many of whom become involved in local politics not through some great machine-like process but because of a genuine feeling that they wish to get something done in their communities.
Local politicians live and work in their local communities and, while it is often said that they do not fully represent the gender and ethnic make up of the nation, the diversity in background is far greater than the upper echelons of our current political parties.
Over the next few months people are going to come up with all kinds of suggestions for reforming our political processes. But it is hard to see a structural solution to an essentially political problem. Any system that doesn't bring in a whole new cadre of MPs, as well as fundamentally challenge the institution of parliament will simply not be enough.
Political parties have a role to play in ensuring that they put forward candidates with deep commitments to the area they serve and with real experience of ordinary life. If they do not, then they too may become increasingly irrelevant. We all need to play our part in upping the calibre of politicians or else local people may stop looking to the mainstream political parties to send to Westminster. If that happens then, who knows, we could see a version of Celebrity Big Brother replacing the ballot box.
Allowing such distance to be established between the governor and the citizen may well be a social evil in itself, and it is certainly a fertile ground for other evils to develop.
David Clark is Director General of SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executive and Senior Managers). He was appointed in July 2000. Prior to joining SOLACE, he was Chief Executive of City of York Council, one of the first unitary authorities created under the last reorganisation of local government. Prior to joining York, David was the Director of the Commission for Local Democracy. He has also worked for the Local Government Information Unit, MIND, the National Mental Health Charity and for the London Borough of Greenwich.
