Spare a thought for MPs, they don’t have a chance of succeeding like FTSE execs
We’re always telling politicians they could learn from business, but they don’t have half of the advantages of being a C-suite boss, writes Natascha Engel
Industry often asks why politicians don’t run the country more like businesses run their companies, trading short-term pain for long-term gain.
Having been an MP for 12 years and now running a business in the private sector, I’ve got some ideas about why that is and what we could do about it.
It’s true that long term investment thinking is not exactly an embedded characteristic of British political culture. The aerated concrete scandal last week was as a result of savings and short-cuts in the 1960s that left the consequences of crumbling schools, hospitals and prisons for future governments (today) to deal with.
Political incentives are very different from those of the world of business. Ministers are moved every 18 months or so. Public opinion swings dramatically. Well-funded, highly-organised pressure groups exert a powerful influence. The media create or amplify hostile environments. British politicians operate in public, in the full glare of Macmillan’s “events” and have to justify their actions as they take them.
The primary concern of MPs – and it would be odd if it were not so – is survival. They serve at the pleasure of their voters, not supportive boards who help them construct considered long-term business plans. Politicians and governments have to get re-elected. It is a general trend of western politics that governing has become a form of campaigning.
Policy that causes pain through an entire electoral cycle will face stiff opposition as soon as the pain, or the costs, become apparent. For example, when the Ultra Low Emissions Zone became a hinge point in the Uxbridge by-election, it had a knock on impact on the government’s green strategy.
If there is an answer, it is to prepare the public better. To explain why certain infrastructure may be unpopular but essential to secure our future. If we want to electrify, we need to build more grid but who will make the case for more pylons? But to have those conversations, politicians need to understand the issues.
Business does, but public engagement is not their forte. Unlike politicians, business leaders are generally not elected but appointed through rigorous processes where experience, education, aptitude and psychometrics are tested – all predictors of how the candidate will perform, if appointed.
The skills that get you elected are not the skills that you need once you get to parliament. Campaigning, mobilising party volunteers and turning out the vote – abilities so critical to getting elected are of no immediate use in the House of Commons.
This means that a new MP may have no particular professional expertise or even an interest in policy. Yet they are expected immediately, and on an almost daily basis, to take long-term decisions on issues that affect both people and businesses in the long-term.
Business, on the other hand, is full of experts – doctorates, scientists and engineers who have worked in their industries for so long that they understand every nuance and consequence. Their information can sometimes be so specialist that it is difficult for lay people to understand yet this is exactly what politicians need. It is the only way they can make better-informed decisions.
Politicians need to understand that business works on different time-scales, but for a successful economy and for healthier politics, business and politics need to appreciate each other’s challenges and limitations.
And that also means sparing a thought for MPs. They arrive in Westminster’s strange environment with its cryptic rules and processes. They are flooded with information, reports, digests, statistics, representations, petitions. They are faced with the requirements of their whips, the demands of their constituents, and in between they have to make some time for their families.
Despite any appearance to the contrary, they really need all the help they can get.