Today’s newsletter: some thoughts on Rishi Sunak’s election campaign, and the decisions, in the last six weeks, but also the last two years that made it so:
Indeed. It’s essentially a campaign with no self-awareness, run by people who would vote for the Tory candidate even had they murdered their own family.
Yeah - if I still had to do the hospital pass of 'write a column for people who will pick up the magazine on Thursday all the way through Tuesday' I would have basically done 'the biggest threat the Tory party faces is workplace ageism' for this reason.
Every day I get a cogent, clearly expressed email from Conservatives. Unfortunately these emails are from FT readers in their 50s and 60s who are still working, and could and should be getting selected and seconded ala Gillian Keegan, while the official Tory material I get is mental.
I (54) was on a Strategic Advisory Board call for a financial sector firm this morning. Everyone on the call was a current or retired *senior* banking or IM executive. Natural Conservative territory? Everyone was *rejoicing* at potential Tory extinction.
This is such, such a bad problem in quite a lot of British institutions now I think about it.
(Particularly vile when combined with any other form of bigotry. Notoriously awful for competent women in their sixties, for instance).
the Conservative Party would be unbelievably stronger if the lobbying industry had been harshly regulated for the last two decades - rather than hanging round knifing each other, the cream of Tory youth would have gone into banking and coming back as experienced and rich fortysomethings.
Honestly I think every political party would benefit from having less MPs whose main work experience is In Politics. They can become like large language models trained on text from other AIs.
I agree (though equally the lobbying stats aren't *as* bad as they look, in that, e.g. a lot of them count 'trade union official' or 'press officer in a charity' and this is one reason why Dan is right to say the Tory party in particularly is badly hit by it)
The House of Commons was named as such, for a reason, and having politicians with no real world experience is generally a bad thing, Mhairi Black being a notable exception.
I appreciate it's not realistic but I think we would generally be a lot better off if our politicians had to live under the worse conditions they impose (housing, benefits, etc) for at least six months before taking power. Wouldn't always work (thinking of IDS and that show he did), but would help.
I agree but then we need to accept politicians having outside earnings [with some conflict of interest safeguards] cos if we insist on every NHS consultant or small business owner or architect exiting their career due being elected for an uncertain possibly short time, we'll get no one of value.
(I also think there is a professional, electable socialist party, but it wasn't really the one we had from 2015-2020 and it definitely isn't the one about to take power)
But why would those sensible 50-60 year olds want to get into politics?
Why would anyone in their right mind want to do such a thing right now? Locally, nationally, it just seems like a way to poison your soul by one means or another.
I've met literally two types of Tory roughly my age - army officers in rural areas who have been increasingly disgusted by the direction of the party and a guy who I once literally had to threaten to throw out of my house due to his obnoxiousness.
