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The last time there was an attempt to assassinate a US president, most of the developed world condemned the act but hoped it was unique to the US. So here are some safety measures that have been adopted by British MPs in recent years: Portable panic alarms. Stab-proof vests. Personal security guards. Avoiding scheduled events and non-essential travel. A national police effort called Operation Bridger has now been expanded to protect elected representatives beyond Parliament.
In a country where political violence has been rare, at least outside of wartime situations like the Northern Ireland conflict, killers have ousted two MPs since 2016 and a candidate was attacked in the recent French elections. Germany’s interior minister cited an “increase in anti-democratic violence” as the reason.
Nearly everyone deplores these attacks. The problem is that the consensus then breaks down. A range of behaviour that borders on violence but doesn’t go beyond it doesn’t arouse as much concern or attention as it should. The harassment of candidates in British elections was greeted with sinister thoughtlessness. To be clear, anti-politician culture is wrong in itself. But more than that, it is self-reinforcing.
This is the vicious circle of modern politics: political work becomes more and more unpleasant, which means fewer good people choose it, which in turn leads to a decline in the quality of public life – in governance and the behaviour of those responsible for governance – which in turn makes voters more hostile towards politicians, and so the cycle continues in reverse.
For example, the question of how a country of more than 330 million people can run an 81-year-old against a 78-year-old for president cannot be separated from the threats to public office and the general difficulties of “frontline politics” (a phrase that now has a rather militant connotation). Do you think there should be more good people in politics? Yes, I’m coming after you, reader.
This is even more true in the vacuum of respectability called Britain. The speed with which Rishi Sunak, who might have been a good prime minister with another decade of experience, rose to 11 Downing Street and then to No. 10 speaks of his ambition, of course, but also of the sheer awesomeness of the competition.
Actual violence is worse than threats, threats are worse than verbal abuse, verbal abuse is worse than intrusive attention, which in turn is worse than the reflexive, almost rote quips now routinely made by politicians in public (“Why should I believe what you say?” and so on). But all have the same effect: all on deterrent individuals (which we can define as people with other good career options, or simply people who are well-adjusted and not masochists). The danger is that politics becomes a kind of clearinghouse for people who cannot achieve similar status in other fields, and who crave attention, no matter how cruel it may be. Here it is tempting to reverse Groucho Marx’s much-quoted line about clubs and members: Congress should not accept anyone who would consider joining.
This argument will always invite complaints that it glamorizes the past. There is no objective measure of the “quality” of politicians, much less anything that conclusively shows that it has gotten worse, and no axiom that people with high general ability will succeed in the special field of politics. Robert McNamara was the American jewel of his generation: a Harvard Business School star, a genius at Ford Motor Company, and a woefully incompetent Pentagon chief during the Vietnam War. John Major’s cabinets in the 1990s were full of people who would have (and often did) excel in academia, entrepreneurship, and professional life. Voters hated it.
But in the long run, the country is run better (not worse) by those who have the chance for other professions who refuse to enter politics. The obsessive always volunteer; the disinterested never. It is the lost, the marginal cases, for whom a life of wealth and anonymity is open to them, who must be tempted.
It is natural to attribute the anti-politician mood to government failures – a failed war, inadequate regulation of banks, and the terrible performance of the British government in raising taxes and worsening outcomes. sauce About those failures. What if the causal relationship was reversed? What if an incompetent state was the ultimate outcome of anti-politics? Is Congress the least trusted institution in American surveys because it is so bad, or is it because the lack of trust in Congress scares off people who would try to get in and rise up in it? We laugh at politicians. That’s our right. But in the end, it’s us who are the laughing stock.
janan.ganesh@ft.com
