I was mulling over this post, for me it is not so much about age but more about experience in politics and the labour movement. When I first got involved in politics there were prospective counsellors, as an example, who had various different occupations, many worked in the public sector, many were active trade unionists. Now up and coming MPs have had occupations that include policy analysts, journalists/advisers, researchers, lobbyists. I mean, the Labour Party PPCs at the last election all looked like they were contestants for The Apprentice!
Only 4% overall of the new intake of MPs were from a working class background. Moreover, only 9% of the current 256 Labour MPs could be described as coming from the working classes. Over a third of all MPs went to a fee paying school; the national average is only 7%.
So much for working class representation. So much for representing women and Black people. No wonder the terms of debate are always on the terms of the established interests. We do not have MP’s who have been stuck on minimum wage jobs or who do not have the money and never will have to buy a decent home. They have never shared our insecurities. They have not been on the receiving end of neoliberalism. At most they can go back a generation or two to get to ancestors who had to duck and dive to live and to get a crust to eat but then look at the politics of those previous generations Mister Ed….
Given there is hardly anyone working…. The current labour ‘leadership’ election is akin to voting for a new captain as the Titanic sinks…. even then the crew had their wages stopped the moment it sank….
I was looking at one of my old politics textbooks the other day – showing the class composition of Labour and Tory MPs in the 1950s.
Labour were about 60% working class, 40% teachers/lecturers/lawyers/journalists. Something like 37 Labour MPs had actually worked as miners.
The rise of the professional political class!
The fall of representative democracy
The lack of representation is a good point and one that needs to be reversed.