Why We Get the Wrong Politicians

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These people are mostly neglected; however, they are in charge of selecting the names on the UK ballot papers. There are mostly unrepresentative. It was revealed in 2013 by the Local Government Association that 67% of local councilors were male and 96% were ethnically white in which the average age of these councilors was 60 years.

Why We Get the Wrong Politicians : Isabel Hardman Why We Get the Wrong Politicians : Isabel Hardman

You will be surprised to find a person that really likes politicians. The majority of us either dislike them with passion or see them with cold indifference. However, we should be more sympathetic as the majority of them are well-meaning people taking an exceptionally hard job. This leads to an appreciation, at a personal level, for politicians, but severe disappointment at their achievements. Her conclusions are pithy, and largely damning, she writes the political career “is characterised by dysfunction, from the selection process that decides who our potential MPs will be, to the way MPs don’t scrutinise laws at all”. The Labour Party, meanwhile, is calling for a general election. They won’t get it as you have to have a two thirds majority in the Commons to have a snap election & the Conservatives will not be voting for it as turkeys would also not be voting for the upcoming Christmas should they have been enfranchised. If they did get it then the problem would be theirs, and they don’t know what to do either. It might not have been a pacy thriller, but there is sex, love, scandal, tortured souls and obsessive characters, hopes, dreams and heartbreak in this book. Yes, it is layered with discussion of fire safety regulations and policy about cones on the motorway, but nonetheless Hardman’s book is a vital and compelling read for anyone interested in the way our politics does or doesn’t work .Isabel Hardman is a political journalist who graduated with a first-class degree in English Literature from the University of Exeter. In 2014, GQ listed her as one of the 100 most connected women in the UK and, in 2015, she was awarded Journalist of the Year by the Political Studies Association. How have we ended up with a political class despised by many of those it supposedly serves? This is the question Isabel Hardman sets out to answer in her excellent new book Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. All of this is delivered in a swift merrily gurgling stream of suppressed horror by Isabel Hardman but her book has two problems – As those who read her in the Spectator or listen to Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster will know, Hardman is a consummate insider with high-level access—here she draws from her interviews with David Cameron, for example. And so it comes as no surprise that she takes a rather more charitable view towards MPs than the book’s title might suggest. Having spent years as a lobby journalist, she has a degree of sympathy with our political masters.

Why We Get the Wrong Politicians – Atlantic Books Why We Get the Wrong Politicians – Atlantic Books

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who actually likes politicians. Most of us either vehemently dislike them or regard them with cold indifference. But we should be more sympathetic – the vast majority are well-meaning and undertaking an extraordinarily hard job. We get the wrong politicians because many of the right people cannot financially afford to run and are deterred from running for parliament by aspects of the job and the prejudices of what Hardman refers to as the ‘Westminster bubble’. Hardman focuses on people in the first section, giving an account of political life that runs from getting into parliament to leaving it. However, being poor for time isn’t only the fault of constituency work. A lot of bills are debated and voted upon at any time in Parliament in which even for the most dedicated of legislators, it’s difficult to stay knowledgeable and considerably vote on them all. Job and promotion interviews should be rethought too. They’re short-term performances. Who are best at making others like them for a short period of time? Extrovert, overconfident sociopathic narcissists. Perhaps it would be better to design systems that didn’t cater to those personality traits. (Elections, unfortunately, are unavoidably performative.) This can be done by ensuring that local selection panels are more diverse and financial support should be given in the form of a living wage and stipend to candidates that are struggling. This will ensure that those selecting who runs for election are more representative of the country and it will ensure that gifted people are not left out due to their financial circumstance.Moreover, a tribal vanity pushes through bad ideas when they cannot be dropped. It is as if winning has become more important than governing well. If the leadership seems not to care or believe that policies will cause harm then this makes conscience votes, even those in step with public opinion, brave and even self-sacrificial. Hardman stops short of telling us that an unsuccessful rebellion can end up being a political purge. Get ready because we are going into details about some malicious and often neglected British government’s aspects. From the MP selection process to their early resignations and we will also learn about why the system is crumbled and what can be done to resolve it. But the point is this: much of the time, when we wonder how someone so unfit for the job ended up in charge, we need only look in a society-sized mirror. When you listen to a train-crash interview with a cabinet minister fumbling over answers to basic questions, remember that. Like it or not, we put them there. Isabel Hardman is a political journalist and the assistant editor of The Spectator. In 2015, she was named Journalist of the Year at the Political Studies Association's annual awards. In an era when politicians are responsible for the Brexit logjam and embroiled in sexual-harassment and expenses scandals, it's no wonder we've lost our faith in government. Every year, they introduce new legislation that doesn't do what it sets out to achieve - often with terrible financial and human costs. But, with some notable exceptions, they are decent, hard-working people, doing a hugely difficult and demanding job.

Why are our politicians so bad? - Prospect Why are our politicians so bad? - Prospect

the extent to which casework takes up large amounts of an MP's time, hence reducing the time they can spend actually doing their main job of passing & scrutinising legislation I’ve sat down with dozens of fellow researchers who study distinct pieces of this complex puzzle: neuroscientists who run experiments on what power does to your brain chemistry; evolutionary biologists who explore why humans are so often drawn to the wrong kinds of leader; psychologists who can’t get enough of narcissistic psychopaths.I thought this was really good. It's a well-considered, non-judgemental examination of flaws in the way our parliament scrutinises legislation. It raised a lot of things that I'd not considered before, in particular: