HOW TO BECOME AN MP

Terry Wynn was an MEP for the North West of England from 1989 to 2006 when he stepped down part way through his 4th mandate. In the European Parliament he was president of the Budgets Committee and has written several works on the EU Budget.
He is on the board of trustees for Action for Children, Vice Chairman of the Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes, Chairman of trustees for The Rock Bus, executive member of CSM, on the board of the European Parliament Pension Fund, a Methodist Local Preacher and Circuit Steward in the Wigan Circuit of the Methodist Church.

A few months ago I received an e-mail from an undergraduate asking how to become an MP or MEP. He wasn’t in any political party, just, I suppose, genuinely looking for job options.

As a former MEP for 17 years, every time I gave a general speech I always said “I have the best job in the world.” So if he’d ever heard me no wonder he wanted a bit of the action.

I meant it too. To be an elected representative at any level is a privilege that few get. Politics is all about power, the power to change things, the power to do things for others, the power to make laws, and the European Parliament gave MEPs plenty of opportunities to exercise power. A budget should always reflect the political priorities of any Parliament so, as chairman of the Budgets Committee, with the final vote on the 110billion Euro EU budget, my role was probably better than the best job in the world.

The beauty of the European Parliament is that because there is no “government” and “opposition” and because no political group has a majority, it means any individual has the chance to amend legislation and they do. That would be a rarity in a place like Westminster, where if you are not in the governing party you don’t have so much as a little finger on the levers of power. So on that reckoning, if you are going to be an MP, make sure your Party gets in power.

Without power you can hold all the fine principles that you want but won’t have any input into legislation. Without power you can’t help the unemployed; you can’t affect aid to the developing world; you can’t help children or the elderly; you have no say in the laws that will shape our future in areas such as the environment and energy. If politics is about power, then is that the reason why people go into it? The simple answer is no.

I remember reading some years ago Jeremy Paxman’s book The Political Animal and in one example he illustrates a Tory MP who lost his seat in 1997, got a job in the City at three times the salary and without the weekend commitments. Yet he was desperate to get nominated as a Tory candidate for the next general election, even though he knew that the Tories could not regain power.
I’ve know lots of friends with the same attitude and the thing that Jeremy Paxman failed to realize is that there are some people who just want to serve the public, even without the power.

It could be that kudos, influence, publicity etc. outweigh a higher salary, but I like to think that service plays some part in it. After all who would want to be a Local Councillor these days with all the hassle that goes with it, yet people do and I would bet that the vast majority do it because they want to serve.

I enjoyed my 11 years in a Labour local authority and those years in Brussels and Strasbourg. But did I go into politics because I wanted power? Of course not. So why then and what did I say to the undergraduate?

The first thing was that being a politician should be a vocation, not a career. Maybe I’m just getting old but my perception of modern politics, and it applies to all the Parties, is that it is full of professional politicians. It seems that too many people do politics at university, on graduating get a job in the Westminster bubble then get nominated on a CLP shortlist and the next thing they are MPs. Some of them are very good but the one thing they lack is real-life experience.

And that was the second thing I told him, politicians should be drawn from all walks of life and have lived a life outside of Westminster. (It’s interesting that you can always tell those MPs and MEPs who have been local councillors and those who haven’t.) Law makers should be not only lawyers, teachers and public sector workers, of whom we see to have a fair share. Where are the engineers, the scientists, the self-employed worker who has started from scratch and worked his/her tripe out, the small business owner who knows all the pitfalls of employing people; where are the craftsmen from the shop floor, the nurses or those who earn a wage instead of a salary? In other words if you really want to bring something to politics then get a proper job outside of politics first.

Why should anyone want to be an elected politician? That was Jeremy Paxman’s question, especially in this day and age when the media can be so intrusive and accusatory. As an MEP the one thing you needed was a pretty thick skin since just about every UK newspaper article about MEPs had the words “fraud,” “gravy train” or “expenses” in it. As A Methodist Local Preacher I would be in a pulpit on a Sunday knowing that half the congregation had just read the Mail on Sunday and were looking at me thinking “he’s a crook.” Once you got used to that then you could get on doing a good job and enjoying it. What mattered most, was not what the press said but what your closest friends and family thought and of course if you were clear with your conscience and God.

Modern day politics needs people with convictions, those who are driven by the desire to serve and better the world in which they live. It needs people with integrity; people who the public want to trust; it needs people who can resist the trappings and temptations of office. Unfortunately such saints are few and far between and all that’s left are mere mortals like you and me. But there is no greater challenge for anyone who carries the tag of Christian Socialist than to be an elected politician. If Kier Hardy could profess publicly that the greatest influence on his politics was Jesus of Nazareth, then what should stop us putting our faith into our politics.

Terry Wynn, 05/03/2009