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The admission by the Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, that she didn’t understand the politics of the province revealed how so many politicians see the pursuit of power as the main motivation, with deep knowledge viewed as passé.įor politics to shift, we need to recruit from beyond the seemingly bottomless Oxbridge pool. This lingering deference to the performatively posh, brashly arrogant and those convinced they have been groomed for power is not unusual. The result of our political culture is a cavalcade of identical politicians bearing little or no resemblance to those they claim to represent.Ī recent article by Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph lamented the fact that for the first time in history, a Conservative cabinet has no Old Etonians, thanks to Boris Johnson’s departure.

Riffling through biographies of senior politicians, it’s clear that seeing elected office as a career end in itself is hardly an anomaly: Theresa May spoke of her desire, while still at university, to be the first female prime minister, and was reportedly enraged when Margaret Thatcher beat her to it. At university, I met dozens of people in their late teens and early 20s who had already then decided they were aiming to become an MP: a few achieved their goal and entered the Commons in recent elections. Yet with a past that both excludes her from leadership while at the same time earns her praise for a style that is “refreshing”, Davidson hints at a problem endemic in British political life.

Davidson fears that standing to be party leader would risk her mental health, whereas for hundreds of thousands of people, the Conservatives being in power does precisely that.

Self-harm in particular is rarely disclosed or understood in discussions about psychological wellbeing, although Davidson must surely see the tension inherent in seeking to end stigma about mental illness while the party she proudly represents tears down mental health provision. The Scottish Tory leader’s frankness has been applauded by campaigners for helping to combat the stigma surrounding mental illness.