Where are our leaders? The battle for top political talent
Last week, former political advisor Munira Mirza launched Civic Future, to create a “stronger talent pipeline” into British politics. With trust in leaders eroding, Harry Wynne-Williams argues that we need to widen the talent pool.
Who’d be a politician these days? It’s fair to say that politicians, especially those in government, have never been held in lower regard by the British public. According to a new non-profit start-up launched last week, Civic Future, in 1986 only 40 per cent of the British public said they had trust in the government. By 2019 that figure had plummeted to 15 per cent. After the events of the last two years, trust in our politicians has declined even further.
Civic Future has been established by the ex-Director of the Number 10 Policy Unit, Munira Mirza. Mirza is someone who has had experience in the corridors of power, having resigned from the Boris Johnson administration, after he falsely accused Kier Starmer of being responsible for the failure to prosecute Jimmy Savile. This has no doubt been a driver in the creation of Civic Future.
The non-profit claims that we need to ‘re-energise public life by attracting more high-calibre people’. Its premise is that gaps in skills, experience and competence have become apparent among the political class because ‘so few of our most capable citizens aspire to enter public life’. It suggests that those who have achieved career success and have expertise in the public, private and social sectors would not typically consider a move into politics because of the ‘arcane and often intimidating world of the British political system’.
To address this, Civic Future is launching a Civic Future Fellowship, a one-year programme designed for those holding down full-time jobs outside of politics, offering ‘the knowledge, skills, and support needed to become great public leaders’ through evening seminars, weekend training sessions and even overseas trips. Fellows will ‘discuss the most important moral, technological and governance issues of our time’ and ‘meet senior figures in government, industry, and society’, before then being offered career advice and support, including a dedicated mentor if they take the plunge.
The effort to bring skills and diverse talent into politics is commendable, as the limitations of ‘career politicians’ are regularly revealed. Here we might cite the example of gaff-prone Gavin Williamson, who, aside from his brief pre-political career selling fireplaces, had a reputation in Westminster as an enforcer rather than a leader. However, will this approach actually attract a different kind of aspiring politician? The Fellowship selection is competitive and one wonders who might now come forward, who might otherwise have been deterred by the ways of the Westminster village.
Surely other disincentives remain for many. However much Civic Future might demystify party politics and procedure, the process of rising through the party ranks and those of government office remains brutal and potentially compromising, when the party whips come calling. Similarly, the exposure and hostility that MPs face from a disillusioned and more culturally divided electorate and the media platforms that influence them are more intense than most might handle. Singular ambition and an uncommonly thick hide remain essential attributes.
Some have commented recently that the business of government has become a combination of striving for competent delivery on the one hand and winning the culture wars on the other. The description of the second part may be reductive – politics has always involved a battle of ideas – but the tone and substance of the political discourse has certainly roughened. We can only hope that this and other efforts to bring wider talent into politics can help equip candidates with the ability to debate or articulate choices and challenges in ways that can inspire more good faith and confidence in those who lead a public life.
Civic Future will also run other public events to lift the lid on good politics and governance, as well as offering other training and briefing to existing parliamentarians or government officials, with a technocratic focus on science, economics, delivery, and crisis management. In a piece for The Times introducing Civic Future, Mirza described her own experiences at No. 10, where she saw first-hand that ‘we’re simply not good enough’ at understanding and dealing with the urgent and complex challenges that need tackling. ‘Too often I was forced by circumstance to engage in a form of on-the-job training for addressing serious problems’, she adds. So better access to expert advice and training must be welcomed. Mirza found inspiration in some of those experts from the scientific community or the military, whose mastery of their brief led her to think ‘I wish we could clone these guys’ and partly inspired the launch of her project.
That access to experts is clearly crucial, but so is ensuring that we maintain a ready supply of subject matter experts who have career paths that reward their expertise – something that could inform constructive reform of civil service career paths - and are prepared to contribute to public life themselves, without getting burnt by association with government.
Other schemes attempt to tap into outside expertise, such as the government’s rebooted Business Council, tasked with supporting the UK’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, prioritising the green industrial revolution, creating new jobs and developing a skilled workforce, and unlocking global investment. However, the ‘rebooting’ reveals how such schemes often lose momentum through the awkward interface between business and government.
One member of that Business Council seeks to move across into politics: Iceland managing director Richard Walker, who has become a Conservative party candidate. Walker has a strong record as a vocal campaigner on a variety of social, environmental and political issues, as informed by his job.
Whatever our politics, we should perhaps welcome his standing, if we agree with Mirza’s call to bring more non-political expertise into government and help them ‘become the public leaders we deserve’.
We do deserve better, but ultimately this is only if the electorate can recognise what we really need in our politicians.
By Harry Wynne-Williams, Director at Audley