Full-time MPS entrench the fatal conceit the state can solve everything

The moral panic over second jobs is a symptom of Britain’s increasingly interventionist culture

What would your perfect MP look like? As an upsurge of justified anger at illicit lobbying morphs into an overall rage with parliamentarians – and especially those with second jobs – a consensus seems to be forming. Certainly, if the opinion polls are anything to go by, we want angels – personable, articulate seraphs, with long and illustrious careers behind them. They’d be happy to be paid less than the current MP rate, and work all hours. No second jobs or side-hustles would be allowed – but nor should they be “career politicians”, a caste which the public detests above all.

We demand masterful legislators who are also full-time social workers, with the moral compass of Atticus Finch. We believe Parliament is a hotbed of corruption, yet also want MPS to assume greater responsibility over our lives than ever before. MPS are simultaneously impotent and omnipotent in the popular imagination – sheep-like lobby fodder, and all-powerful political puppeteers. In short, we ask an awful lot from the role, much of it contradictory.

My dream MP would be principled, intelligent, but “do” relatively little, favouring a benign inertia in the Lord Salisbury mould. Rarely would she deliver a speech calling on ministers to acknowledge International Stammering Awareness month or ask toadying questions of the “Does my Right Honourable Friend agree with me that levelling up is the best thing in British politics since votes for women?” variety. Rather than filing endless early day motions and joining every all-party parliamentary group in sight, she’d focus on a few worthwhile causes, and do them well. She’d spend less of her budget on parliamentary staff; more on experienced caseworkers for the constituency office.

On balance, I’d prefer a capable part-time MP over a full-time busybody, so I’d welcome those with second jobs if they enriched Parliament’s hinterland. Try as I may, I struggle to get exercised about someone of Geoffrey Cox’s intellectual calibre earning bucketloads in the outside world provided he didn’t acquire it through any dubious practice or conflict of interest.

Many insist that clamping down on second jobs would itself entice a better class of public servant into politics. In practice, it could trigger an exodus of expertise, leaving career politicians to make up the deficit – especially if unaccompanied by a pay rise (something the public also deplores). The presence of multifaceted MPS can create a more independent-minded type of politician, free to criticise the Government without fearing the financial or professional hit. While attorney general, Cox insisted that his legal reputation mattered more to him than his political career, and wouldn’t always tell the Government what they wanted to hear.

Above all, I wonder why we are quite so keen on institutionalising a political class that sees politics as a full-time job that will therefore attract professional politicians. This creates unintended consequences – influencing not just the quality of MPS, but our perception of the state’s role in our lives. All major parties appear wedded to the same delusion; what the free-market economist Friedrich Hayek called the “fatal conceit”, the idea that “man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes”. This worldview sees the state as the universal panacea and has become universal in our politics too.

Though perceived as mediocre, our political class is expected to solve everything – from the failure of rubbish collections, to decades-long disparities in income between the UK regions. Michael Gove recently spoke of wishing to “push” housebuilding from the South to the North of England. Fine in theory, but betraying a hubristic belief that if you build more houses in parts of the country with low demand, people will simply move there, regardless of whether there are jobs and opportunities to attract them.

Today’s Tories favour intervening in energy markets, then intervening again to fix problems exacerbated by the first intervention. Naturally, their solution to the crisis of social care is a statist one; throwing billions at creaky infrastructure with no demand for reform. The Government is reportedly considering banning landlords from letting out their properties unless they make them more energy efficient.

This is precisely the kind of illthought-out wheeze that might be superficially popular (landlords probably rank somewhere below MPS in public esteem) yet risks deepening the housing crisis as landlords stop letting or hike rents to help meet the costs. The pandemic has obviously entrenched the statist shift, but it has been mirrored in the changing role of Parliament for some time.

Being an MP was traditionally a part-time job you performed alongside your main one. The state of Texas, where most lawmakers make their living outside politics and pass laws on the side, remains proud of its part-time legislature. In Britain these days are long gone. Mostly thanks to the complexity of the welfare system and the decline of local government, MPS often function more like social workers or Citizens Advice advisers.

Expectations have shifted too, as I saw when I worked in Parliament a few years ago. Sometimes doing nothing is the best approach, but the arrival of social media, plus websites like “They Work For You” and the petitioning platform 38 Degrees, have encouraged performative hyperactivity, a pressure to look frenetically busy at all times. Good in theory, but it can resemble a dog swimming – paws paddling manically under the water, yet achieving only the slowest forward motion. Ironically, while MPS feel busier and more harassed than ever, the Government has supplanted their once-vital role in scrutinising legislation by imposing its will on Parliament via often unamendable statutory instruments.

Hayek wrote that “the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design”. Our political class appears blissfully ignorant of this dictum. Most seem to imagine, Canute-like, that they can turn back the tide on almost everything (although unlike Canute, they’re not in on the joke). The rise of the professional politician is a depressing symptom of a culture in which the state holds the solution to every woe, relegating the individual to the sidelines.

MPS are expected to fix everything from rubbish collections, to disparities in income between the UK regions