Best Man For The Job

Daniel Hannan is a legend. His blog on telegraph has been one of the most consistent sources of fresh air for a last couple of years. His speech in Strasbourg in front of Gordon Brown not only collected million hits on youtube, but may have played a role in changing the course of history. After all, Brown was there promoting the New Deal and The Biggest Fiscal Stimulus The World Has Even Seen - and that was his last public appearance before he climbed down from the tree and started pretending that this was not what he planned G20 meeting to be all about.

But here he was today on his blog, setting out a view that only Members of Parliament can become ministers in HM Government. According to him, being "democratically elected" is the only qualification needed to run any Government Department.

First of all, most of MPs are not even elected based on their personal qualities or abilities. People tend to vote for party rather than for individual who represents the party in their constituency. So the individual MP is actually democratically elected only by members of his party who happen to be registered in specific geographical area. And even this process is constantly being fiddled with, with candidates being parachuted by party establishment.

But let's put that aside for a second. Let's assume that all our MPs actually won over hearts and minds of sufficient number of people in their constituences to win themselves a seat in the Commons.

Does this make them more suitable to run a department than say, somebody who actually knows something about the field he is supposed to oversee ?

I am not saying that you can't acquire that knowledge after being elected as MP, but with ministers looking at their appointment as mere step in the career towards the top of the greasy pole, there is no reason for them to do that. What's more, usually, there is no time too, with cabinet reshuffled every year or so.

What we have as a result is a set of incompetent people, trying to govern departments they have no knowledge about. No wonder they can't get anything done - if you put me in pilot's chair now, I would not be able to take off, no matter how much I want it.

Unfortunately, this incompetent approach is rooted deep into our culture at the moment, with TV programms advocating the public vote as the best tool to determine one's suitability for specific role getting the best ratings.

It's up to Andrew Lloyd Weber and Alan Sugar to decide whether they want to distribute important jobs in their businesses based on public opinion.

But running a Government is a much more complicated matter than singing a song. And we need as many specialists there as we can get. Now more than ever.

And this is not how dictatorships start: specialist ministers seem to work just ok in US.

It's probably ok to insist that PM must be elected ( although some of the best British Prime Ministers in the glory years were actually sitting in Lords ) - but then it should be left to him to find the best man for any job, whether within the House Of Commons, or outside of it.

As a result, of course, less career politicians will be given ministerial jobs.
I can only hope that this is not what Mr Hannan is worried about.