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House of Commons (Effectiveness)

One of the problems with such research is defining "business" as including all sorts of businesses. I would be interested in finding out the sorts of business that people were engaged in and the kinds of position they held. Should we despair of the present situation in politics and of the changes, in personnel in particular? Can anything be done about it? The hon. Member for Reading, West is right that there never was a golden age—politics has always been difficult, even if we go back to the classics of political sociology. I want to read out what Max Weber said in 1919 at the end of his great essay, "Politics as a Vocation", because it is still true:""Politics is a hard, slow boring down through hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. All historical experience confirms the truth that we would not have attained the possible unless time and again we had not reached out for the impossible. But to do that, one must be a leader, and in a very plain sense, a hero. And even those who are neither must arm themselves with a steadfastness of heart that can take strength even from the shattering of all hopes, or else we will not be able to achieve that which is possible right now. Only those who are sure that they will not be destroyed when the world, from their point of view, seems too stupid or too debased for what they have to offer, who can say, in the face of all of this, 'in spite of all', only they have a true vocation for politics."" Those of us who have lost our vocations should at least say that we have not lost our faith. Politics is still the most important thing for anyone to do—it is about everything. Even those of us who are liberals and believe that the most important thing to do in politics is to draw a dividing line between what politics should be active in and what it should not be active in—between the public and the private—recognise that that question itself is a political one, which must be defended and argued out in places such as this. Politics is about defending political views—it is about all the other things that the hon. Member for Reading, West mentioned, but in the end that is what it is about. Even though a lot of us say that politics is something that we should do less, we should all end by saying that it is something that a lot more people should do more of. My final message echoes something said by the hon. Gentleman. Politics is only safe when it is done by more people and when more people participate and have the experience of responsibility. The reason that he is right about the media and its effect on our politics, is that it infantilises our population. We need to do the opposite and to make sure that we have ways of encouraging more people to take more responsibility. Only in that way can we maintain our democracy.