Michael: A recent survey found that only 21% of Britons trust a Member of Parliament to tell the truth. Kevin: Ouch. Michael: That puts them below estate agents, bankers, and journalists. Kevin: Okay, now that's just insulting. Lower than estate agents? That’s a special kind of low. It feels like complaining about politicians is our national sport. Michael: It really is. But what if the reason we get politicians we don't trust is because the job itself is designed to break the best of them before they even start? Kevin: Huh. That’s a twist. You’re saying the problem isn’t the people, it’s the job description? Michael: That's the central question in Isabel Hardman's incredible book, Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. Kevin: And Hardman is the perfect person to write this, right? She's not an academic looking from the outside; she's a top political journalist, assistant editor of The Spectator, who has spent years inside the Westminster machine. She sees it all firsthand. Michael: Exactly. And the book was widely acclaimed, even won the Parliamentary Book Award. It's less a takedown and more a forensic, almost sympathetic, look at a system that seems designed to fail. And it starts long before anyone even gets elected, with what I can only describe as a brutal gauntlet.

Kevin: Okay, so where does it all start to go wrong? Is it the selection process? I always just assumed you put your name down and people vote. Michael: If only it were that simple. Hardman paints a picture of a process so grueling and expensive that it acts as a filter, weeding out almost everyone who isn't independently wealthy, obsessively driven, or already part of the 'Westminster Bubble'. Kevin: How bad are we talking? Give me some numbers. Michael: Let's look at the story of Rowenna Davis. She was a Labour candidate selected to run in the marginal seat of Southampton Itchen. To have a shot at winning, she moved there and dedicated two years of her life to campaigning full-time. Kevin: Two years, full-time? How did she support herself? Michael: In her own words, through "debt and generosity." She and her team raised and spent £150,000. They recruited over 200 volunteers and distributed half a million leaflets. She was everywhere, supporting local campaigns, knocking on every door. Kevin: Wow. That's an incredible amount of effort. So she won, right? Michael: She lost. After two years of her life and going into debt, she lost. And the kicker? In the next election, a different Labour candidate who did far less campaigning almost won, simply because the national political tide had turned. Kevin: That is soul-crushing. £150,000 and two years of her life for nothing? Who on earth can afford to do that? It's like the world's most expensive, high-stakes unpaid internship. Michael: Precisely. And Hardman’s research shows this disproportionately affects women, who are almost twice as likely as men to say they couldn't afford what they needed for their campaign. It filters out people with normal jobs and families. Think about Scott Mann, a Conservative candidate who was also working as a postman. Kevin: A postman? While running for Parliament? Michael: Yes. He described the absurdity of delivering his opponents' campaign leaflets in the morning on his postal route, and then delivering his own in the afternoon. He was literally being paid to help his rivals. That's the reality for candidates who don't have a trust fund or a high-paying, flexible job. Kevin: It’s a system that seems designed to select for a very specific type of person. Someone who is either rich, or has a level of obsessive ambition that might not be… well, healthy. Michael: Exactly. And even if you have the money and the drive, the selection process itself can be bizarre. Parties have these assessment days, and there's a whole cottage industry of consultants you can hire to polish your CV and coach you on how to answer questions. One aspiring Tory MP, Chris Philp, was trying to get selected for a rural seat. Kevin: What did he do? Michael: He put a picture of himself lovingly embracing his horse, Remy, on his campaign leaflet. He’d tell local party members, "my horse is stabled locally," to prove his connection to the area. Kevin: He used his horse as a political prop? That’s amazing. Did it work? Michael: Not in that seat, no. But it shows the lengths people go to. And sometimes, the people who get through the process are, to put it mildly, questionable. Hardman tells the story of Afzal Amin, a Tory candidate who was caught colluding with the far-right English Defence League to stage a fake protest that he would then take credit for stopping. Kevin: You're kidding me. That sounds like a plot from a political satire. Michael: It gets worse. After he was exposed, one of his fellow Tory MPs told a journalist, "Oh, everyone knew he was a well-known nutter." Kevin: Wait, hold on. They knew he was a 'nutter' and they still approved him as a candidate? What does that say about the vetting process? Michael: It says the process is deeply flawed. It's often controlled by a tiny, unrepresentative group of local party members. The system isn't designed to find the most competent or stable person. It's designed to find someone who can survive the gauntlet. And if you survive, you arrive in Parliament exhausted, probably in debt, and ready for the next stage of the ordeal.

Kevin: Okay, so let's say you survive that gauntlet. You're broke, exhausted, but you've made it. You're an MP. Surely it gets better once you're inside the Houses of Parliament? Michael: (Laughs) That's when the real problems start. Hardman describes Parliament not as a grand debating chamber, but as a bewildering and often dysfunctional workplace. There's no formal training, no clear job description, and no performance appraisals. Kevin: No job description? For a Member of Parliament? What do they even do all day? Michael: That's the thing, nobody tells them. They're pulled in a million directions—constituency casework, media appearances, party meetings. And the core job, scrutinizing legislation, often gets lost in the noise. One new Tory MP, after a year on the job, lamented to Hardman, "I am failing the country... I am voting on things that I don’t understand, and this upsets me." Kevin: That is a terrifying confession. The people making our laws don't understand them? How is that possible? Michael: It’s a combination of a 'yes-man' culture and immense pressure from the party whips. The whips are the party enforcers. Their job is to make sure MPs vote the way the leadership wants. And the first step on the career ladder for an ambitious new MP is to become a Parliamentary Private Secretary, or PPS. Kevin: What does a PPS do? Michael: They're basically an unpaid assistant to a government minister. It's seen as the entry-level job for getting into government. But there's a catch. As a PPS, you are on the 'payroll vote,' which means you are expected to vote with the government, no questions asked. You effectively give up your right to scrutinize or rebel. Kevin: But that's their main job! To hold the government to account! So to get ahead, you have to stop doing the one thing you were elected to do. That's completely backward. Michael: It's the paradox at the heart of the system. And it creates this culture where loyalty is rewarded above all else. Hardman tells the story of Dr. Sarah Wollaston, a Conservative MP who was also a practicing GP for over two decades. Kevin: You'd think she'd be perfect for health-related legislation. Michael: You would. When the government introduced its massive Health and Social Care Bill, she wanted to be on the bill committee to use her expertise to improve it. But the whips told her she could only join if she promised to table only government-approved amendments. Kevin: They wanted an expert to join, but only if she promised not to use her expertise? Michael: Exactly. She refused, saying it made a mockery of scrutiny. So she was blocked from the committee. The government would rather have loyal backbenchers who will just nod things through than an actual expert who might ask difficult questions. One Tory backbencher was brutally honest about it, saying his job on a committee was to "assist the minister and get the legislation passed... It is a good career move for me as you’ve got the minister and the whip watching you." Kevin: So the committees that are supposed to be picking apart these laws are just full of people trying to get a promotion? It’s a performance. Michael: It's a performance. Former Labour MP Tony Wright described it perfectly. He said on these committees, you're just doing your Christmas cards or your correspondence, and the whips are telling you, "Don’t say a thing. Certainly do not start flitting about with cross-party amendments. Do not complicate the party battle." Kevin: This explains so much. It explains why we get laws that seem to have obvious, massive flaws. The people who are supposed to be the quality control have been told to turn a blind eye. Michael: And that's before we even get to the personal toll. The book is filled with heartbreaking stories of MPs' mental health collapsing under the pressure, the loneliness, the online abuse, and the high rate of divorce. Charles Walker, a Conservative MP, described Parliament as a "screwdriver that prises the lid off a tin of paint. It is very good at finding your weakness." Kevin: Wow. So the system doesn't just produce bad laws, it actively breaks the people inside it. Michael: It can. And when you have a system that filters out normal people, then warps the ones who get through, you end up with a massive blind spot when it comes to making policy for the real world.

Michael: And that 'yes-man' culture, combined with a lack of diversity, creates what Hardman calls a policy blind spot. It's why we get policies that look great on a spreadsheet in Whitehall but are practically disastrous on the streets of Britain. Kevin: What do you mean by a blind spot? Michael: It's when a room full of people with very similar, privileged backgrounds tries to solve a problem they've never personally experienced. They lack the perspective to see the obvious flaws. The classic example is the Poll Tax in the late 1980s. Kevin: Right, the flat-rate community charge. I remember the riots. Michael: The idea was devised by a homogenous group of policymakers who thought it was an academically beautiful, simple idea: everyone pays the same. They completely failed to imagine the practical chaos of trying to collect the same amount of money from a duke in a castle as from a family of four in a small apartment in a poor area. They were blindsided by the public fury because their world was so disconnected from that reality. Kevin: So it's not that they're necessarily evil, it's that they literally don't know anyone who would be devastated by that kind of policy. They have no frame of reference. Michael: Precisely. And Hardman argues this pattern repeats itself. Look at the 2012 'Omnishambles Budget' from George Osborne. Kevin: Ah, the 'pasty tax'. Michael: The pasty tax! And the 'caravan tax'. The Treasury wanted to apply VAT to hot takeaway food. To them, it was a logical loophole to close. They didn't foresee the cultural backlash, the headlines about declaring war on the humble Cornish pasty. They didn't understand that for millions of people, a hot pasty is a cheap, staple lunch, not a luxury. Kevin: It’s a perfect example of a policy that makes sense in a bubble but is totally out of touch with everyday life. Michael: And it happens again and again. Hardman points to the 'bedroom tax,' or underoccupancy penalty. The idea was to stop paying housing benefit for 'spare' rooms in social housing. It was meant to save money and free up larger homes. Kevin: Sounds logical on the surface. Michael: But it was a disaster in practice. It penalized disabled people who needed a room for a carer or medical equipment. It penalized families in areas where there were simply no smaller flats to move into. The government's own figures showed it failed to save the money it was supposed to, but it pushed over half of the affected families into rent arrears. Kevin: Because the policymakers were thinking about spreadsheets, not people. They didn't ask the basic question: "Where are these people supposed to go?" Michael: Exactly. And this is why constituency work is so vital. It's often the only time MPs are forced to confront the real-world consequences of the laws they pass. Hardman tells a fascinating little story about David Cameron. His government had pushed through huge cuts to legal aid. Kevin: I remember that. It was very controversial. Michael: It was. But Cameron only truly understood how messy and damaging the cuts were when he was sitting in his own constituency surgery, and a local solicitor came in and laid out, step-by-step, how the policy was devastating access to justice for his own constituents. It took that one-on-one, real-world encounter for the Prime Minister to see the flaw in his own government's legislation. Kevin: That’s incredible. The system of scrutiny in Parliament failed, but a single conversation in a constituency office succeeded. It shows how deep the disconnect is. Michael: It's a profound disconnect. And it's a direct result of a system that filters for a narrow type of person and then incentivizes them to be loyalists rather than legislators.

Kevin: So after all this, can we get the right politicians? Is there any hope, or is the system just permanently broken? Michael: Hardman argues there is hope, but it requires fundamental change. The problem isn't just about finding 'better people.' It's about fixing the broken filters and incentives of the system itself. We need to make it possible for a wider range of people to stand for office, which means tackling the insane financial cost. Kevin: And once they're in? Michael: We need to change the incentives. Hardman floats a radical idea, inspired by other systems like the US: what if we separated the executive from the legislature? What if government ministers weren't also MPs? Kevin: Whoa. So the Secretary of State for Health wouldn't be an MP? Michael: Correct. They could be a top doctor, a hospital administrator, a public health expert. They would be appointed for their expertise, not for their loyalty on the backbenches. And they would have to come to Parliament and persuade MPs to pass their laws, rather than commanding them through the whips. Kevin: That would completely change the power dynamic. Backbench MPs would actually be empowered to do their job: scrutinize. They wouldn't be thinking about their next promotion into the government they're supposed to be holding to account. Michael: It would make their primary job legislating, not climbing the greasy pole. Now, Hardman acknowledges this isn't a silver bullet—public confidence in the US legislature is also incredibly low. But it points to a different way of thinking about the structure of power. Kevin: It feels like the whole book is a plea to change our perspective. Michael: I think it is. It forces us to ask a different question. Instead of asking 'Why are our politicians so bad?', maybe we should be asking, 'Why would any sane, talented, and principled person ever want the job in the first place?' When you see the gauntlet they have to run, the dysfunction they have to endure, and the personal price they have to pay, the real surprise isn't that we get the wrong politicians. The surprise is that we get any good ones at all. Kevin: That's a heavy question, and a powerful way to reframe the whole debate. We’d love to know what you think. Does the system need a complete overhaul, or are we just being too cynical? Let us know your thoughts on our socials. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.