The Non-Political Class Is Not the Problem to Be Managed
The people closest to failure are often the first to spot it. The problem is that politics still has better listening channels for organised interests than for ordinary people who see what is going wrong on the ground.
6/4/20265 min read
The non-political class is not the problem to be managed. It is the part of the country that still understands work, consequence, urgency and value.
That belief sits close to the heart of Establishmelt and what we stand for. It is not anti-politics, and it is not a demand for every national decision to be made by whoever is angriest on the radio that morning. Good government needs law, process, expertise, scrutiny and elected authority. Without those things, democracy becomes noise.
The problem is different. Too often, the people closest to failure are heard last, least or only after the damage has become impossible to hide.
The Post Office scandal is the obvious example, and it should sit uncomfortably in the national memory for a very long time. Sub-postmasters raised concerns for years. They were not sitting in theory seminars. They were running branches, handling money, dealing with customers, balancing accounts and watching a system tell them something they knew did not feel right. Many of them were treated not as giving early warning signals, but that they were the fault in the system.
That distinction matters. When ordinary operators raise concerns, the response is too often to defend the process, protect the organisation and question the person making the noise. By the time the truth becomes official, lives may already have been damaged, money lost, businesses ruined and trust destroyed.
The lesson should be simple enough. The people closest to a failing system are often the first to see the problem. They may not have the language of a policy document, a public affairs team or a glossy presentation. What they often have is something more useful: direct experience of how a decision lands when it leaves the meeting room and hits real life.
That kind of experience is still undervalued, but hey lets have a nice meal out with a lobbyist guys....
“In a cost of living crisis, the question is not just how much hospitality MPs declare. It is why the public only gets to see it once the benefit from a single source exceeds £300. For many households, £300 is not a reporting threshold. It is the food shop, the energy bill, the car repair, or the difference between coping and falling behind. If influence is only visible above that line, what sits below it?”
Between elections, public life is full of organised access. MPs, ministers, departments and public bodies deal with trade bodies, campaign organisations, consultancies, public affairs firms, advisory panels, stakeholder groups, regulators, arm’s-length bodies and quangos. Some of that contact is useful and some is necessary and brings genuine expertise into the system. A government that never speaks to specialists would be foolish.
But that is not the same as saying the current balance is right.
A self-employed electrician does not usually have a route into the room and a shop owner watching a high street decline cannot easily compete with a professional lobby group. A parent dealing with a failing local service may have a job, a school run and a life to keep together. A small employer who can explain exactly why a policy sounds good but works badly is unlikely to have a public affairs consultant turning that frustration into a neat briefing note for ministers.
This is where the system becomes distorted. We are not suggsting this is through corruption, and not always through deliberate exclusion, but through habit, convenience and access. The people who know how to influence are heard more clearly than the people who know how things work on the ground.
We should be honest about the influence industry. Peter Mandelson is a useful example because his career shows how power can keep moving long after voters have stopped being involved. He twice resigned from Tony Blair’s Cabinet, later returned to high office, and went on to co-found Global Counsel, a public policy advisory and lobbying business. Whatever view anyone takes of Mandelson’s political skill, his career raises a fair question for a site like this: why does the system so often keep doors open for insiders while making ordinary people fight to be heard at all?
That question becomes sharper when firms with deep political connections are involved in areas where public money, regulation, technology and national policy overlap. Global Counsel has been linked in reporting to major corporate clients and sensitive sectors, including technology and public services. The point is not to claim that every meeting is improper, or that every adviser is doing something wrong. The point is that access itself has value, and the public is entitled to ask who gets it, why they get it, and whether the same seriousness is given to people without a title, a former office or a network.
David Cameron and Greensill offer another example from a different party, which is important because this is not a Labour problem or a Conservative problem. It is an establishment problem. Cameron was a former Prime Minister when he lobbied government on behalf of Greensill Capital, a company in which he had a significant economic interest. A Treasury Committee later said his status as a former Prime Minister should have been irrelevant to how the Treasury treated his approaches.
That sentence should be printed out and taped to a few doors in Whitehall.
It captures the problem neatly. In theory, status should not matter. In practice, it often does. A former Prime Minister, former minister, senior adviser or well-connected lobbyist can often get a hearing that an ordinary citizen, small business owner or frontline operator would struggle to secure, even when the ordinary person is closer to the problem and has less to gain personally.
This is not a call to shut experts out. It is a call to stop confusing access with wisdom.
We should also be fair to MPs. Many work hard holding surgeries, answer emails, attend local meetings and deal with difficult casework that most people never see. Some have serious experience outside politics, including business, law, public service, charities, healthcare, education and the armed forces. Parliament is not made up entirely of people who have never done anything beyond politics, and pretending otherwise would weaken the argument.
The issue is not whether every MP has run a business. The issue is whether the system listens properly to people who have built, fixed, delivered, served, employed, sold, repaired, cared, transported, taught, treated or simply lived with the consequences of public decisions.
There is a difference between being represented and being heard isn't it?
Representation gives us MPs, councillors and elections. Being heard requires a system that takes practical experience seriously before the scandal, before the inquiry, before the compensation scheme and before the apology. It requires MPs and public bodies to ask who is missing from the room, not only who has submitted the most polished briefing. It requires consultations that reach beyond the usual organisations. It requires decision-makers to value the person who says, “I do this every day, and this will not work.” That sentence is not always sophisticated, but it is priceless.
The same applies to growth and local renewal. If we want more small businesses, better high streets, stronger local economies and more productive communities, then we should spend more time listening to people who understand the barriers. Ask the self-employed person waiting months to be paid. Ask the small manufacturer dealing with energy costs, planning delays or procurement nonsense. Ask the café owner who knows why footfall drops after 4pm. Ask the tradesperson who could train someone but cannot carry the risk alone.
Those people may not arrive with an acronym, a funding round or a badge on a lanyard. They may still have a better answer than the people who do.
The Establishmelt position is simple enough. Expertise matters, but practical experience matters too. Public policy should not be shaped mainly by those who know how to get access. It should also be shaped by those who understand the work, the delay, the cost and the fix.
The non-political class is not the problem to be managed.
It may be where many of the answers have been sitting all along.
Sources: Criminal Cases Review Commission summary of Post Office Horizon cases; House of Commons Committee on Standards report on APPGs and lobbying access; GOV.UK profile of Peter Mandelson; reporting on Global Counsel and its clients; Treasury Committee report on Greensill Capital.