Patrick Kingsley on Everything
Politicians are people too
Why Brown and Cameron are really dearies, not devils, in disguise
Ready for a Rooibos
When I was 16, I served time as Charles Kennedy’s tea-lady. It was a job for which I was abjectedly unsuited. Back then, I’d never even drunk a caffeinated drink – Red Bull came later – and I had little idea of what filter coffee was, let alone Earl Grey. I served tea as some kind of lukewarm, milked-out, undrinkable syrup which slopped hopelessly down the side of mugs as I delivered them, wobbling, to the desks of unsuspecting Lib Dem analysts. The whole thing was a catastrophe. I was spilling caffeine left, right and centre. I sprayed coffee all over Ming Campbell’s trousers. Enough was enough, and I was moved to the Correspondence Unit.
As it happened, though, Christmas 2005 was an interesting time to be opening Charles Kennedy’s post. As leader of the Liberal Democrats, he was taking a battering. It was similar to the way Gordon Brown is now being treated. Every week, another member of Kennedy’s shadow cabinet criticised him in the press. Rumours about his alcoholism began to resurface. A pack of hyena-hacks haunted the corridor outside his office. Twenty-three Liberal MPs signed a letter calling for his resignation, while three thousand party members put their names to a ‘Kennedy Must Go’ petition.
“The worst is over,” Charles told us staffers on the first day back in January. But by the end of the week, he’d resigned. It all happened on the Saturday. I was in Piccadilly and I saw the newsflash on one of those big neon bulletins. I rang my father from a public phone-box and he turned up the radio so I could hear the resignation speech. I cried so much I had to hang up.
Christmas 2005, then, was also a pretty upsetting time to be opening Charles’s post. Sky News and BBC 24 – which we watched masochistically at all hours –became processions of betrayal, as MP after MP took their turn to twist the knife. Internet messageboards, meanwhile, were rammed with armchair experts slamming Charles with epithets like “a liar, a drunk, and a feeble grasper of power.” It was hard to see my boss – a good, decent man whom I hugely liked and admired – stabbed so many times in the back by those supposed to be his friends, and vilified by members of the public who didn’t even know him. And it wasn’t just Charles I felt for. If Charles went, all ten of his lovely staffers would be out of work, too. In particular, my heart went out to Mike, who’d turned down a fellowship at an Oxbridge college only two months earlier to become Charles’s speechwriter.
The lesson I learnt was a sentimental one: public figures, whatever their stripes, are often decent people underneath it all; and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. When we look at politicians, we have a tendency to confuse criticism of their policies with condemnation of their characters. Public mismanagement, however, shouldn’t lead to personal vilification. Alleged bungling of the economy, for example, should never be an excuse for calling anyone “a one-eyed Scottish idiot”, to borrow Jeremy Clarkson’s eulogy for Gordon Brown.
It’s a lesson I remember most keenly as we rumble once more towards a general election. Whoever loses in May will be publicly humiliated. It’ll be the end of their political career. But amidst all the name-calling and finger-pointing, we’d do well to remind ourselves that Brown and Cameron are humans, too. Whatever you think of their policies, these people aren’t evil; they’re not racists or fascists; they’re in politics out of duty and service. And so, as their life collapses around them, don’t scorn them; pity them instead. Pity their families. Pity their backroom staff who’ll be made redundant in six months time. And pity their tea-ladies, too.
Topics: Charles Kennedy, Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, Politics, Tea
I think this is the most balanced view of politicians I have ever read online, and it is completely right.
It doesn’t help that politicians put a lot of effort into personalised attacks, but some kind of perspective from the media would help matters immensely.
I have worked in varying spheres of politics since leaving university several years ago – and the closer you get to actual politicians, the more you realise that politics is in many respects a truly thankless task.
Are you saying that racists and fascists are, therefore, not people?
That’s dreadful.
I would have loved to have sprayed things all over Ming Campbell’s trousers!!! And I would have loved it even more if it had been Paddy Ashdown, long-term crush.
NB I HAVE MORE TO SAY ON THIS, LET’S TALK
Don’t scorn people who are responsible for the deaths of millions every year through starvation and malnutrition, easily-treatable illness, cold, lack of blood caused by prejudiced donor policies?
Don’t scorn people who put the screws on working people in order to protect the personal wealth of the rich?
Don’t scorn people who have broken the unions – the one means those people had of resisting the screws being put on them – and kept them broken?
Don’t scorn people who have taken tax money illegally and immorally for their own personal gain?
Don’t scorn people who deliver speeches about restoring trust in politics then dodge questions about whether their supporters are tax exiles?
Don’t scorn people who scapegoat vulnerable minorities and fan the flames of xenophobia?
Don’t scorn people who have still yet to ensure equal rights even in theory for same-sex couples?
Pity them?
No, thanks, I’ll carry on scorning them.
Hi Luke – nicely ironic!
That was an excellent point Luke. Let’s focus on the agenda to build and not the agenda to destroy through tabloid “news”. We’ve got plenty of REAL things to focus on.
It’s too bad that people just don’t get this simple fact!