Do MPs have the ‘Right Stuff’?

ASK members of the public to compare politicians to animals—and the results are brutal. During a series of focus groups for the Hansard Society in 2004, people variously described their elected representatives as snakes, rats, vultures and sheep. The inference was clear: when MPs are not busy engaging in nefarious activities, they are submissively following whatever orders their superiors instruct them to carry out. Indeed, the extent to which the participants held politicians in disregard was further evidenced when they were asked what words they associated with the terms ‘politician’, ‘Parliament’ and ‘politics’. Participants responded with: hypocrite, dishonest, liar, sleaze, self-promotion, greed, expenses, selfish and childish. One participant remarked that he could not be a politician, as he was unable to lie well enough. 1 The accepted script seems to demand that MPs are spoken about in terms usually reserved for petty criminals or worse. Disdain for the individual and for the political system as a whole is now viewed in the context of declining turnouts and the low levels of public interest, knowledge and engagement in politics over recent times. This has sparked wide-ranging debates on public disengagement, as well as corresponding efforts to increase involvement in the political system. This ongoing process of self-examination has entailed the political class and others devoting considerable energy to debating the merits, or otherwise, of the current political system, the institutions that form part of it and the individuals who operate within it.