The New Nomenklatura
Filed under: The left, Labour Party on Monday, January 25th, 2010 by petec | No CommentsTrevor Fisher argues that the new elite is only interested in politics run by professionals.
In a recent edition of Chartist, Duncan Bowie commented on the influence within the Fabian society of a group of Think Tank officers with certain characteristics. He remarked that they “all know each other and seem to live in a closed world… they are all relatively young and seem to have little experience outside the Westminster village”. The grouping alas is even bigger than think tanks, including NGOs, pressure groups, public relations and the media and increasingly the two main political parties. The evolution of a new, centralized clique justifies the Russian term Nomenklatura – those whose careers and fortunes are in professional politics.<p>
The idea of elites within politics is of course not new, as C Wright Mills classic study of US politics in the 1950s The Power Elite demonstrated. But this is a new power elite, linked by age, experience, education and ideological preference – not merely for a free market politics of the American model, but also by a belief that politics has to be run by professionals trained in the arts of spin doctoring. Party labels are secondary to this development.
In these respects they differ from the old political elites who were often openly restrictive in their recruitment practices but who responded to the growing electorate of the nineteenth century by incorporating firstly bourgeois businessmen like Peel and John Bright, then professionals like Asquith and Lloyd George, then women, trade unionists and the respectable working class. The evolution of parliament for over two centuries was from the domination of the landed classes, principally aristocratic, analysed classically by Louis Namier, to the current urban and professional elites. In the process politics moved from Old Corruption to a relatively corruption free state – but is now moving back toward a politics of self interest as the expenses scandal indicated.
The gap between the political class and society as a whole is widening. For Labour, as Ken Livingstone has commented, politics is becoming an all graduate affair, with himself and Alan Johnson the last non graduates in the front line. Labour politicians no longer earn their spurs in local government or the unions. Within the Tory Party there has been an equally marked decline of the provincial businessman of the Chamberlain and Baldwin era. The scandal which briefly emerged over a female think tanker who had been involved in a very public affair with a Tory MP indicated that this was not a bar to her becoming a candidate. Sexual preference, gender, age, experience, are no longer issues. But you have to sleep with someone already in the Westminster Village, and you have to work for a Think Tank.
There are many problems associated with the growth of the Nomenklatura, and the identi-kit politicians who have now emerged. It poses a threat to parliament in terms of its representative and democratic credentials – Cameron threatens to cut cabinet salaries, but not that of his director of communications: an Alistair Campbell is more valuable than a minister – and it widens the gap between voters and politicians. Primaries are a joke. Only those favoured by the machines would ever get on the ballot paper, while the selection of homogeneous candidates by the machine favours safe hands over independence. The Glasgow North by election saw the lowest turn out ever in a Scottish by election, while currently only 53% of the electorate are likely to vote. The evolution of a Nomenklatura could well allow a populist party to rise up. Or just a host of independents trading on the sense of alienation now endemic among the voters. Analysing this trend is going to be a key task in making sense of contemporary politics.