Are there too many posh people in politics? And, if so, what should we do about it?

Chris Dillow, in a slightly chip-on-his-shoulder manner, writes how "posh people" should be disqualified from politics. Chris cites lack of hustle, overconfidence, a casual attitude to money and the lack of a "gut understanding" of how other people live. There's nothing new about the analysis presented - people who've had a struggle to escape from poverty very often resent the effortlessness with which posh people slide into grand roles.

There are, however, some thoughts arising from this that strike me as important:

1. By creating two categories, rich and poor, Chris ignores the reality which is that most people are neither. An interesting experiment here would be to contrast the manner in which 'middle class' is understood in the USA and the way in which 'middle class' is presented very often in the UK. I'm middle class (my Dad was an insurance clerk in the City for all his working life) but my experience bears little or no resemblance to the typical middle class life described in the Sunday supplements with its foreign holidays, private schools, nannies and endless dinner party angst.

2. Empathy is really important in politics - perhaps as important as what we could call "lived experience". One of the features of modern political discourse, with its emphasis on economics and obsession with evidence, is that it loses feeling. Everything is boiled down to a narrow utilitarian analysis with no room for "gut understanding". People parade class credentials (or attack others for their excess of privilege) without appreciating that this is simply adopting a badge not being empathetic, let alone understanding, of other people's lives. I may be the grandson of a miner but that doesn't make me working class - just a little bit closer to understanding that class than someone who is the grandson of an earl.

3. Policy-making is dominated by the well-off. Chris points to some very privileged people - Jacob Ree-Mogg, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Seumas Milne and Andrew Murray - to make his point about how posh folk are a problem. But there's a much bigger group of people, not all the product of elite private schools, but still unquestionably wealthy and privileged. The influence of these people (they litter the media, civil service, think tanks and charity administration as well as politics) leads to tin-eared policy-making such as the persistent attacks on working- and lower middle-class lifestyle choices.

4. Generally-speaking the private sector is far more egalitarian than the public sector. I recall the then chief executive of Reed Elsevier telling a tale of how, for the annual report, his PR team were very proudly saying "all our senior management are graduates" - he had to point out to them this wasn't true as he wasn't a graduate. Employment in the city has always been a strange mish-mash between barrow boys and public school grandees (not least because trading requires that ability to hustle, negotiate or strategise that Chris points out is often missing in posh folk).

5. There are too few what I would call "ordinary people" in politics these days. From 1965 to 2005 the Conservative Party was led by people from ordinary backgrounds (Heath, Thatcher, Major, Hague, Duncan Smith, Howard) - all bar one from what us Londoners call the 'provinces'. That politics is now - in every part of its spectrum - completely dominated by folk from less ordinary backgrounds is a failing in what should be an egalitarian pastime.

We give a great deal of attention (rightly in the main) to getting better representation from women and ethnic minorities but much less attention to whether the interests and outlook of the people we chose, gender and race aside, reflect the interests and outlook of most people, especially outside London and the Home Counties. Indeed, there's a tendency to look down the nose as MPs like Phil Davies ("he used to work in ASDA, you know") or Ben Bradley ("shelf stacker in Lidl") rather than see this experience as providing a fighting chance of actually understanding what it's like for the customers and employees of value supermarkets.

I don't think the posh should be disqualified from politics, people like Tony Benn and Willie Whitelaw made major contributions to politics, but I do consider that Chris Dillow has a point - political parties need to think harder how they can get people who better represent the electorate. I think the Conservative Party has done some good work here but it is still the case that the centralised candidate approval system makes it too easy for London-based people with good connections to get approved and onto shortlists for winnable seats.

Perhaps we need also to look at non-graduate routes into professions - my uncle was a county court judge when he died but started his career as a 14-year old post boy in a solicitors' office (another uncle started at Barclay's as a sixteen-year old and finished as a senior tax accountant at the bank). These days too many jobs are closed off to non-graduates - the latest here is nursing which has gone the route of social work and policing in this regard - which makes it pretty tough for the 50% of kids who don't go to university.

Lastly, we need to ask whether the domination of London and the process of sortition by wealth (largely driven by housing costs) contributes to the manner in which well-off people simply don't have a clue about the real lives of most ordinary people - not just the poor but millions of people who are what the Americans would call 'middle class'.

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Empathy in regeneration: hugging the poor and saying 'there, there'

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Julia Unwin, boss of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has written a book about combatting poverty. I have yet to read it but I'm pretty sure it will be the usual curate's egg of calls for government intervention and creative ideas for responding to the inefficient distribution of economic gain.

However, the response of some - in this case Neil McInroy from the Centre for Local Economic Studies - is to return to the idea that economic reality shouldn't be described because it's insufficiently empathetic. And worse to suggest that our policy-making should be guided by empathy not evidence:

Too often policy has little empathy toward the poorest.  We already know that the policy default settings, such as trickle down and a ‘rising economic tide will lift all boats’ are just not strong enough to tackle poverty, even in times of growth.  But increasingly, some policy seems alarmingly detached from the plight of the poorest.

For Neil and his ilk, asking why people are poor rather than merely how we should relieve that poverty is a problem. Rather than seeking to eliminate the causes of poverty - why people rely on state-handouts, how some people fail and require relief, the way in which the economy (and society) places barriers preventing escape from poverty - Neil wants us to carry on with his cuddly consensus, with policies best described as "giving the poor a big hug and saying 'there, there'."

Empathy is fine but saying that it necessarily describes the actions - the distorting interventions of Neil's preference - required is to misuse emotion as a policy tool. Emotion guides us to the need to act not the nature of that action. And we've used Neil's qualitative, judging approaches to policy for 40 years - during which time the poorest places in England have remained just that, the poorest places in England.

I don't care how much empathy Neil has - his policy prescription, currently dubbed "place-based" but in reality a localised protectionism, will act only to make matters worse for the poor with whom he empathises so readily. These 'place-based' policies are fantastic for the better off in poorer places - they love all the growing stuff, the collectives, the community meetings. But the poor aren't included - they're looking on as cheaper food is denied, as business is condemned and as a fake "resilience" makes the world less open and more expensive.

Empathy is a fine emotion. But is isn't any sort of guide to what we should do to make people's lives better.

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