In praise of MPs

My first full-time job, at the age of 18, was working for an MP. In the following 27 years, almost my entire career has been spent in or near Westminster. I know and have known lots of MPs. To coin a phrase, some of my best friends are members of parliament.

This, of course, means I’m biased on the topic of MPs, inclined by reason or familiarity to think well of them as a group. But it also means, I hope, that I have a bit of knowledge — knowledge that might be worth sharing as the Commons remembers Sir David Amess and James Brokenshire.

It’s hard to generalise about an inherently diverse group, but MPs as a whole are not, in an important way, like the rest of us. To reach the Commons requires a type of drive and motivation that most people lack. Almost nobody finds getting selected and elected easy. Fewer still find serving as an MP purely joyful.

This isn’t just about the relatively recent and horrible phenomenon of online abuse. The day-to-day — or perhaps week-to-week — life of an MP is rarely glamorous and often tough. The hours are irregular and combine insistent demands on your time with periods of aimless emptiness. You generally have to try to live in two parts of the country, which is hard on families and relationships. Drinking too much and having extramarital affairs can sometimes seem like occupational hazards for MPs.

The money isn’t life-changing. Yes, £82,000 is a lot. It’s more than some MPs would make elsewhere, but less than most would make. The overlooked question is how long they earn it for. If you have a safe seat, you can expect a long career. If not, you might be out after four or eight years. And my friends who are former MPs would not mind me saying that life as a former MP is rarely easy. A very small few can turn their experience in politics into a lucrative life on company boards. Many return to their old jobs, often while dreaming of a return to Westminster and the job that made their life a misery. ‘It ruined my life and I miss it every day’ one former member told me a few years ago, before another (failed) attempt to get re-elected.

This is what really makes MPs different, the willingness to crawl over broken glass to get and keep a job that often isn’t that great. You need good reasons to do this, and the obvious one — vanity — isn’t enough. Yes, lots of MPs do it because they like the idea that it makes them important, famous and special.

But exactly the same can be said of lots of other people and their jobs: I’ve known doctors, lawyers, priests, police officers and soldiers who get a similar kick from the status and, yes, power that their roles confer. I’ve even heard it said that some journalists enjoy status and attention and aren’t solely motivated by the need to speak truth to power.

For a disproportionate number of MPs, politics is about meeting a deep-seated need to address a loss or lack of something. At the risk of straying into amateur psychoanalysis, it’s striking how many politicians lost a parent during childhood or have some other family tragedy in their personal history. Sometimes consciously, sometimes not, such MPs use these tragedies to power them on the arduous journey to and through parliament.

They also tend to have causes, things they feel so deeply and strongly about that they are prepared to dislocate their families, careers and lives to enter and remain in politics. Those causes generally make them a much more interesting and varied bunch than broad political labels would suggest. Sir David Amess was a case in point: he was a eurosceptic Roman Catholic who worried about abortion while fighting for animal rights and greater support for women with endometriosis. Such things matter more than whether an MP happens to be Conservative or Labour or whatever.

And all MPs serve a place. By standing for parliament, they commit to a constituency and its people in a way that other public servants might recognise. To write this piece, I looked up the 2005 maiden speech of James Brokenshire, a thoroughly nice and decent man who died too young. It captures the outlook and interests of MPs very well. There’s a thought on consumer credit and household debt, a warm tribute to his Labour predecessor as MP for Hornchuch, and a tour of the constituency and its needs. And finally, there’s a promise:

“It is an honour and a privilege to serve as the Member for Hornchurch. One of my local priests, the Reverend Bob Love, said to me that hope is one of the most valuable things that we can offer. In a small way, I will try to provide that sense of hope to my constituents, by standing up on the issues that matter to them, by listening to those who think that no one is prepared to be interested in their concerns, and by giving a voice in the House to those who have none.

That is, in the end, what politics is about. It’s what politicians are for. We will always debate how well they live up to their words and deliver on their promises — scrutiny in good faith is integral to democracy.

But as Westminster remembers two MPs who have gone too soon, we should always remember that those politicians are people who are prepared — for a complicated and ultimately human reasons — to do a job that is necessary. A job that the rest of us would never be willing to do — I know MPs and their lives and there is nothing in this life that could ever persuade me to to seek election to the House of Commons. But I’m very glad that there are people who do those things.

MPs are an odd bunch of people. They represent us, but in some very important ways they’re not like the rest of us. We’re lucky to have them.