In the last few years, there’s been a lot of use of the phrase “Professional Politician” in derogatory terms. A “professional politician” is one who has never had a job outside of the political arena, going from researcher, to special advisor to MP  (usually, though other routes through think tanks and party organisations are considered, and with the real extreme right wingers any job not in the private sector counts) after university.

Phrases used often include “Never done a proper job” or “no knowledge of the real world”. This is – of course – so much right-wing bullshit. What do these people consider a real job? Why is doing meaningless paperwork in the office of a private company preparing someone better for life as a politician than shadowing one during their long and difficult days and getting a true feeling of the work expected? Why is this the one career where it is seen as advantageous to do something completely unconnected first?

Why do we expect a 20 something who is passionate about changing the world, and sees politics as the best vehicle for doing that, to take some time not doing that? We wouldn’t do it to a passionate nurse, or a passionate banker. Young people are under-represented in politics, and in order from us to have a representative house of commons, we need to keep bringing young people through – not telling them to go off and do other things until they are “ready”. This is a time in a person’s life when they are often at their most passionate and most radical – qualities that I believe will be good for the body politic.

So lay off the professional politics jibes. It denigrates their service and will end up making our politics even more homogenous than it already is.

Tags: MPs, professional politicians, young people

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 10th, 2010 at 08:55 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.