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No, they need better front-stories. This obsession with backstory is now a staple of modern politics. You all know the shtick by now. Politicians competing with each other in a prolier-than-thou contest to prove they are just like us.
I’ve had several versions of this question. Do our leaders need to be more normal? Do they need to have overcome adversity? Must they have had a “real” job? Must they have lived our values? But all boil down to more leaders with better backstories.
The ideal is an inspiring story of adversity or poverty overcome by force of will. Or failing that some act of heroism which makes them stand out. Announcing Laila Cunningham, as Reform’s candidate for Mayor of London, Nigel Farage sought to brand her “vigilante mum” because of an incident when she tried to find the muggers who attacked her child. It’s an appealing take even if it amounts to less than a political programme.
In recent weeks there has been much Labour chatter about the leadership potential of a new MP called Al Carns who is already a defence minister. This state-school-educated Scot was a Royal Marine Commando who rose to the rank of colonel, and was decorated with the Military Cross for his service in Afghanistan.
You don’t get a much better backstory than that, especially on the Labour benches. The only problem is we really don’t know if he would be any good as a political leader. To be clear, I’m not saying he isn’t PM material. I’m just observing that there isn’t yet very much to go on.
But a good backstory excites campaign professionals. It is easy to see why a background like Carns’s gets the image-crafters salivating. Who wouldn’t want a man of action over, say, a former special adviser or lobbyist? Their history can make them worth a look but it is not the be all and end all.
Voters apparently like authenticity. They want someone like them, someone they could imagine having a pint with and that is apparently not a life-long political professional, a former special adviser or, for some reason, a lawyer. This is a problem because they also want someone who can manage the almost-impossible job of being a prime minister. I’ve been for lots of drinks in lots of pubs and I have to say that no one with whom I ever had a casual pint leapt out as the person best placed to run the country.
Did the fact that Keir Starmer’s father was a toolmaker (did you know that?) in any way inform us of the kind of prime minister he might be? And backstory is not always helpful. Sadiq Khan and Sajid Javid share Pakistani immigrant backgrounds and dads who were bus drivers. One is the Labour mayor of London, the other a former Tory chancellor.
Where you came from, especially your adult experience, is not irrelevant. Your story and how you choose to frame it tells us something about you and your values. Support for universal free school meals from the Labour Party reflects the shame some of its working-class ministers were made to feel when getting their subsidised lunch as kids. But where you came from is considerably less important than where you intend to take us.
There is also an inverted snobbery to backstories. In campaign terms, Rishi Sunak had the wrong one. Even though he could boast an ethnic minority background, with his GP and pharmacist parents, he’d had a private school education and a career in the City. Yet actually, a boy from an unremarkable middle-class background, whose family worked to send him to Winchester and who then had his own success, is also a decent story when you think about it, even if it will never make a Hovis ad.
Incidentally, Nigel Farage — the City trader and privately educated son of a stockbroker — has a lousy backstory, almost a tickbox of everything political professionals don’t want on their CV. But his party is leading in the polls, partly because (like it or not) he talks about how he plans to fix the country’s ills.
In an era of social media, minimal attention and never-ending campaigning, one can see why so much emphasis is placed on image and backstory, the pint in the pub, “are they like me?” question (I don’t know, did you win an MC in Afghanistan?). You cannot get past the image-crafting and backstories. But a focus on politicians’ pasts rather than their plans for the future helps explain some of the mess the country is in. Vibey politics may be a reality, but “things can only get better” is a campaign song, not a strategy.
Email Robert at magazineletters@ft.com
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