04/07/2012
Nick Clegg is being seriously mocked for his candid disclosures made during an address to business leaders, politicians and journalists in Westminster.
Lamenting his "tough job",
he told his audience: "It feels like I've had a lobotomy", saying that working in government had left him feeling "lobotomised" and that the "frenetic" pace of the job meant he had no time to think.
It is very easy to mock here and, in the case of Clegg, this is almost mandatory, but that doesn't stop the man having a point. Many times, I have observed the same, noting,
for instance, back in July 2008 that the "main trouble with our MPs is the frenetic lifestyle they lead in their artificial bubble at Westminster. It does not give them time to think".
More recently, I wrote of a survey of the
French Parliament, where MPs described their lives as forever being "head down". In interviews, they complained of a sense of "asphyxia" or "loss of meaning". Many cited the inability to think, or take a step back.
Amid the mockery that Clegg has engendered, Tory MP Zac Goldsmith agrees with his statements, adding that it was not just ministers who feel like they have lost part of their brain. Goldsmith said backbench MPs were also "lobotomised in Parliament", as they rarely hold government to account for fear of missing out on promotions.
Zac doesn't quite seems to have got the point, but then, as former editor of the loss-making
Ecologist, he could never be accused of thinking clearly, even without the pressure of being an MP.
That apart, this issue does matter. Back
in 2009, I wrote a ruminative piece on the effects on policy when MPs do not think clearly. Since then, if anything, the situation has got worse and, if some of the problems are of the MPs' own making, many of them reflect the pressures of the 24-hour news cycle and the frenetic pace of modern life.
Just thinking of one comparison, in 1940 the London Blitz started on Saturday 7th September, yet it was not until 11 September that Churchill, having spent days touring the devastated areas and consulting with the authorities and colleagues, finally addressed the nation about it in a radio broadcast.
It is inconceivable that the business of government could now be conducted at such a leisurely pace, but we are still served by institutions and conventions that owe their origins to those times, and long before.
It seems to me that someone needs to do some thinking about the way our style of government impacts on human physiology and intellectual capabilities, for we are the true victims of the "lobotomies" of which Clegg and others complain.
The trouble is that those people best placed to do the thinking are those least able to do so, which means we have a self-perpetuating train-crash. But at least we are closer to understanding why the performance of governments and legislatures is so poor.
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