Brexit farce: We need serious politicians to stick around and not run away

As Walter Ellis remarked on these pages yesterday Nick Clegg is now working for Facebook. Nick Clegg? Remember him? He used to be Leader of the Liberal Democrats and, more to the point, Deputy Prime Minister in the Coalition Government 2010-15. He lost his Sheffield seat in Mrs May’s rash General Election, and so good-bye.

That’s the way it goes now. Prime Ministers and senior ministers rarely stay in politics once they’ve been rejected by the voters or, like Tony Blair, by their party colleagues. We used to do things differently. When Asquith, ejected from office in 1916, lost his seat in the Khaki Election of 2018, he didn’t say “that’s enough then. I’m off”.  He was over seventy and his Liberal Party was split. Nevertheless, he contested a by-election in Paisley and won it. As leader of his part of the Liberal Party he was responsible for enabling Labour to form its first Government – a minority one – in 1923. This was a good thing, a responsible act which confirmed Labour’s commitment to parliamentary democracy.

Few think of Asquith now. But what about Churchill? Having been Chancellor of the Exchequer 1924-9, he was ignored when the National (coalition) Government was formed in 1931. He was fifty-five, unpopular and distrusted by his former colleague, also, as ever, in financial difficulties. These days someone in his position would have walked away from Westminster to make more money elsewhere. Churchill, however, stuck around. In 1940 most people were rather glad that he had done so.

Politicians used not to see a lost Election as the end of their career. Think of Gladstone and Disraeli, Balfour and Lloyd George, as well as Asquith and Churchill. Politics – parliamentary politics – was their metier. They stuck around. Even out of office they recognized that they could make a valuable contribution. Harold Wilson was the last Prime Minister to return to Number 10, Downing Street after having lost office as a result of defeat in a previous General Election. Now even Tory leaders of the Opposition can’t survive on Election defeat.

David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major all left the Commons soon after losing office, and none of them has even gone to the House of Lords. They may write newspaper articles, but, being out of Parliament, they are yesterday’s men – or the days before yesterday’s. Their knowledge and experience, deepened and even enriched by failure, are lost to their successors, to their party and Parliament. There are now no respected Elder Statesmen in the House of Commons. There is no one who speaks with the authority that comes from a long experience of politics.

Wouldn’t the quality of Brexit debates have been improved if Gordon Brown had been there to speak from the Labour back-benches? It is as if Government office, even at the highest level, is merely a job you do before you move on to another (which will pay better). Losing office is therefore regarded as the natural end of a political career. It was, I think, proper that David Cameron resigned when the EU Referendum delivered a Leave majority. But it was unnecessary and, to my mind, wrong, lacking in public spirit, for him to leave the Commons. Indeed, it was irresponsible. It suggested he took himself more seriously than public affairs.

David Miliband was Foreign Secretary in the last Labour Government. When Gordon Brown resigned the leadership after losing the 2010 election, David Miliband was defeated by his brother Ed in the party election. Almost immediately he left Parliament and headed for a well-paid job in the USA. Remaining in the Commons might apparently have embarrassed his brother. So what? Either he was serious about politics or he wasn’t. Evidently, he wasn’t. Churchill’s presence on the back-benches in the 1930s embarrassed Baldwin and Chamberlain. So what?

Alec Douglas-Home remained in politics after losing the 1964 election and resigning the Tory leadership the following year, and served again as Foreign Secretary in Heath’s Government 1970-74; but he of course belonged to the old Governing class for whom engagement in politics was a matter of public service as well as any personal ambition. Heath himself remained in the Commons for more than a quarter-century after losing the Party leadership, and spoke with authority from the back benches.

Today’s politicians are feebler folk. Cameron has run away. So has George Osborne. William Hague is a rather silent member of the House of Lords. All are younger than Churchill was in 1931. One must conclude that none of them was ever a truly serious politician. None cared enough to stay in the fight.

There’s an old City saying that a Crash comes when there’s no one left in the office who remembers the last one. It might be applied to politics today.