We must demand more from our politicians

The first mention of Westminster appeared in a charter of 785, attributed to King Offa, granting land in “this terrible place”. The document, however, was a forgery, drawn up by 12th-century monks to make Westminster Abbey seem like a place of sacred terror. Even so, “this terrible place” would seem to most people today to be an apt description of SW1.

Parliament has failed to cover itself in glory in recent years: the financial crisis, the expenses scandal, the Brexit wars, the Prime Minister’s merry-go-round, the unfair but unshakeable perception that our politicians are manipulating – with their finances, and perhaps with their staff – while Britain suffers. It is therefore no surprise that politicians of all stripes have tried to increase their popularity by attacking Westminster.

For Scottish and Welsh nationalists, the Palace of Westminster explains the underperformance of their beloved homelands, not to mention the generosity of funding they receive via the Barnett Formula. During eight attempts to be elected to the Commons, Nigel Farage repeatedly denounced “the Westminster bubble”. Newly elected Green MP Hannah Spencer has condemned the alleged drinking culture in Parliament. And now another left-winger hoping for by-election success says Westminster’s shortsightedness drove him to move to Manchester, but is now forcing him back to save the city.

Excusing politicians on the basis of their education will only increase contempt for politics.

Jokes about Andy Burnham identifying with equal ease as a Blairite, Brownite and Corbynite are commonplace. But the Mayor of Greater Manchester’s pose as a political outsider, a northern tribune speaking hard truths to London, is remarkable for a man who left Cambridge to work as a special adviser before being parachuted into a safe Labor seat, sitting in the Cabinet, then losing two leadership elections. Paint a few buses yellow, play a little Oasis, and all is forgotten.

Perhaps Burnham underwent a real conversion on his way up the M6. Perhaps his “Mansterianism” – a “business-friendly socialism” – is a coherent governing philosophy which – through an assortment of devolution, social housing construction and “stronger public control” of public services – will mark “the end of neoliberalism”, a break from the “trap of high inequality and low growth that emerged in the 1980s” and revitalize the fortunes of the Labor Party. Certainly, maybe.

But the grass is not greener on the other side of the Irwell. The growth that Manchester has enjoyed is largely the result of long-standing municipal initiatives, George Osborne’s ‘powerhouse of the North’ policy and Boris Johnson’s transport reforms. Burnham took advantage of his distance from the capital. He developed an image as a man of the people, far from the control of the national press or the challenges of the national government.

In this he can be compared to Nicola Sturgeon. The former Scottish first minister often received rave reviews south of the border, and these were accompanied by a lack of curiosity matched only by Sturgeon’s apparent disinterest in her now estranged ex-husband’s spending habits. Just as she failed to ask where her husband, Peter Murrell, found the money for a £124,550 camper van and a £2,618 set of salt and pepper mills, Sturgeon’s cheerleaders failed to notice Scotland’s growing failures in education, record drug deaths and toxic political culture.

Similarly, a different set of standards has developed for politicians who are characterized as workers. When it was discovered that Robert Kenyon – the Reform candidate against Andy Burnham in Makerfield – had approved a sexually explicit tweet about Carol Vorderman, the party’s response was to say he was not a “polite, professional politician”, but an “effective voice for normal working people”. Similarly, when Angela Rayner was found to have failed to pay stamp duty, her supporters said she was targeted because she was a working class woman.

Yet to hold working-class politicians to lower standards is to embrace the soft bigotry of low expectations. Ernest Bevin was orphaned at eight and left school at 11 to become a farm laborer; Nye Bevan left school at 13 to work in a coal mine. The couple went on to create NATO and the NHS. Today’s working-class politicians should aspire to similar heights, rather than deploying their experience as a smokescreen to hide their failures. Excusing politicians on the basis of their education will only increase contempt for politics. This amounts to implying that only the privileged should be morally upright, which is insulting to people of all backgrounds.

Andy Burnham wants to return to Westminster because that is where the power ultimately lies. The qualities needed to succeed in SW1 are different from those required to cheer behind the scenes as the self-proclaimed King in the North. Going from a £2.6 billion budget to running some of the world’s biggest bureaucracies, to chairing Cobra and managing the competing demands of public opinion, agitated MPs, the vagaries of the bond market and national security, is a huge step forward. Few of them succeed. But successful ministers in recent years possessed the kind of guile and immersion in Whitehall that SW1’s critics despise. Westminster is an arena to be navigated, not a barricade to be stormed. Even if it is often defiled, this “terrible place” persists.

There is no doubt that a lot could change at Westminster. A crumbling Victorian palace, with mounting costs and repair times, is a depressing national metaphor. But demanding better from SW1 and fixing our often dysfunctional political system shouldn’t mean believing every fake chancellor who claims to be an outsider.