Your Own Personal Jeremy Clarkson

Behold! I have had a thought.

Hello!

Hi! Not much of an intro this week lads, because there’s a long essay to follow, and also because I feel like I’ve recently sent you enough recommendations to last you, oh, at least a few more weeks.

I do hope you like the piece though! It’s about something I’ve been mulling over for ages - and it’s about politics, because you know, it kind of is the only show in town right now. Normal, more whimsical programming to return next week, probably.

A column

I read something recently, heaven knows where, which argued that you couldn’t be an interesting thinker if all your opinions were predictable. It annoyed me a bit, I think, because I usually pride myself on the coherence of my stories, views and traits. I’ve no idea if it’s a neurodivergence thing, a me thing, or a bit of both. What I know is that I like things to be neat and make sense, and I think it’s neat that, as far as I can tell from the inside, I broadly make sense.

I’m not really allowed to have opinions on the big political stuff publicly, due to my job, but if I were to list all my stances, I doubt anyone would be shocked or surprised by most of them. My views are basically what you’d expect them to be. 

Still, every rule has an exception, and there is the occasional topic on which I stray from my natural home within the political spectrum. I often call them my Jeremy Clarkson opinions, which may be unfair as he isn’t a raging reactionary on absolutely everything, but I find it to be a good shorthand. 

Most of them are minor; for example, I do not believe that tracksuits, hoodies and jogging bottoms belong anywhere but spaces where physical exercise is taking place. I would also like to see fewer trainers in places where the dress code ought to be formal. Oh, and do not get me started on “athleisure”. It’s a plague. As far as I’m concerned, Lululemon belongs at the Hague.

Most of my JCOs are similar to this one: unexpectedly conservative, with a small c, but essentially harmless, and concerning trivial matters. A handful of them are more consequential, and controversial. Had I been more ambitious, I probably would have leant on them more frequently in my columns, becoming one of those writers whose views are impossible to predict, and who are so beloved by other writers.

Because I’m a coward only aiming for the medium time instead of the big one, I am instead going to express one of those opinions now, just below the paywall line.

Right, here goes: I think we sometimes scrutinise MPs too much, and expect them to do too many boring things, and we should give them a longer leash. I think that would make our politics better. I also think that many people who disagree with me are asking for the impossible.

It’s something you see all the time these days: commentators and others wondering why so many grandees leave Parliament so soon after leaving ministerial positions, why we can’t retain talent in Westminster, why more interesting people aren’t running to be MPs in the first place. I can tell you why! It’s because we’ve turned it into a bit of a rubbish job.

We look to the past and wonder why politicians back then seemed like proper statesmen, with life experience and wit and great big brains, and there’s a simple reason why they were in Parliament. No-one expected them to treat it like a full-time job. 

I remember doing weeks and months of research for Honourable Misfits, reading about hundreds of MPs from the 17th century to the end of the 20th, and they all had one thing in common: they just didn’t spend that much time in the Palace of Westminster, and they practically spent no time at all in their constituencies.

Up until maybe 60 or 70 years ago, countless MPs wouldn’t even bother having a house in their patch. They’d go down there a few times a year and would stay with a friend, or in a hotel, or, in at least one case, with the local priest, who happened to have a spare room. They would speak in the chamber but only when they genuinely cared about the matter at hand, and/or happened to be around anyway. Quite often, they’d pipe up in the evening, when drunk.

Up until maybe 30 or 40 years ago, no-one really cared about backbench MPs, or even about junior frontbenchers. If you were lucky, your local paper would sometimes write about the fact that you existed. In terms of negative coverage, you really had to try very hard to make it into national headlines. 

If you were a big beast, who’d done all manners of cabinet jobs, the expectation was that you would treat the Commons more or less like a second home, turning up when you fancied it. The rest of your time was probably spent working elsewhere, or simply having a nice time in London, and no-one really batted an eyelid.

None of this is true today. Being an MP in 2024 means having to spend at least a quarter if not a third of your week, every week, in the constituency. In that time, you must ideally meet some constituents, visit some local businesses, and generally be seen in your area. When in Parliament, you should speak in as many debates as possible, especially the ones which are or may be relevant to your patch.

You should keep an eye on the correspondence your staff deal with, and sometimes engage with constituents by email and letter yourself. Ideally, you should be lobbying ministers on issues relevant to your area. You should also make social media content, so people know you are working hard for them. It would be frowned upon for you to have a second job that takes up a lot of your time. You should also not leave SW1 when the House is sitting, and not miss votes unless you have a very good reason to do so. I could probably go on, but you get the idea.

This may be the point at which you are thinking that yes, well done, I’ve successfully described what a job is. If you have a schedule and are expected to be in the office and do your work in order to get a salary at the end of every month, then so should they. It wouldn’t be an unreasonable point to make, but I would be tempted to be annoying, point to the House of Commons and say: do you really think that place over there is currently working as well as it could be?

Of course, there are other issues we could be fixing. The selection process is broken beyond belief. The disciplinary process isn’t anywhere near as efficient as it could be. Still, my main argument is that you just cannot have it all. If you want your MPs to be quiet and conscientious local lads and lasses done good, so animated by the idea of public duty that they wouldn’t dream of anything else, that is entirely fine. What you would have to accept, however, is that a House of Commons full of 650 of them just wouldn’t be very inspiring.

Debates would consist of endless three-minute speeches, all of them sounding strikingly similar and ready to be packaged into a neat Facebook video. Arguments about policy would, for the most part, resemble their American counterparts, where everyone argues for what is best for their patch, and little else. There would be little leadership on show, as none of those people were born or bred to think of themselves as leaders. In essence, Britain would be run by a sea of super-councillors, whose real passion lay in pointing at potholes and looking stern.

Is this really what the country needs right now? I don’t believe it is. Even if I did, I’m just not convinced we could make it happen. In politics as in romantic love, we can only work with the people we’ve got in front of us. Of course the people who run to become members of Parliament will always be different from the rest of the population. Even at its best, it’s a profoundly odd gig. Of course they are more likely to be outspoken eccentrics, yearning for power and likely to get bored easily.

You’re allowed to find those traits distasteful, but that doesn’t mean you can do away with them entirely. “I just think that people who like being very stimulated by their job and life and used to be cabinet ministers should stay on as backbenchers and attend endless village fetes for decades because three times a year their expertise may become relevant in the Commons” is an opinion you can have. That doesn’t mean you can magically make it happen.

Every choice has drawbacks and, if you want interesting people in national politics, you’ve got to make sure that they can lead interesting lives. This can mean less stringent expectations on the time they spend in their constituencies, or the number of speeches they give in the chamber, or any other way in which they can have some freedom to do what they want. 

If these are proposals you just cannot stomach, that is fine, but you have to be honest about what that means. You can’t then turn around and complain about the fact that our political class is dull and drab, and used to be more inspiring. You wouldn’t want those old-timey MPs in the Commons today, and would probably call for them to leave Parliament if they were there.

For what it’s worth, I’m not even entirely sure where I stand on the issue. I have more sympathy for one side than the other, but I can still see all sides of the argument. I wonder if there’s perhaps some middle ground we could reach, but I also recognise that it is very unlikely to happen. It would, ironically, be political suicide. 

My main contribution, really, is to say that you just can’t have it all. The only way to have a real conversation about the state and quality of our MPs is to be honest about that. We can’t have it all! It would be nice if we did but we don’t. That is my reactionary opinion. You’ve got to pick what you want, and deal with the downsides that come with it. Clarkson out.