The Political Animal - An Anatomy

Jeremy Paxman, Penguin Books/Michael Joseph, £20.

by David Alton

I can see why Gerald Kaufman wrote such a hostile review of Jeremy Paxman's "The Political Animal." Most of the beasts who inhabit the political jungle will dislike the mirror being held to their face. Yet, taken in the round, Paxman does politics a service by asking why so many people are repelled by contemporary politics.

We may not care for the caricature, and there are some sweeping generalisations, but when turnout has fallen as low as just 6% in one council election in the north of England, there is no cause for complacency.

I recently visited Blackburn, Burnley and Oldham to talk to people about why the British National Party has been making in-roads at the expense of all of the traditional political parties. Again and again I heard the refrain that people felt let down, abandoned, alienated by politicians who were remote and indifferent to their needs. If this is to be reversed the old animals are going to have learn some new tricks: principally a re-connection with public service rather than the vestiges of power.

Paxman opens his account with a slightly sneering send-up of a politician who, at a school prize giving, encourages the children to get involved in politics. He reinforces the image of a duplicitous man on the make who wouldn't know what public service was if he fell over it. The real reason he is standing there in front of the children is either because he has a tendency towards megalomania or he wants the money. This is as trite as it is offensive.

"The Political Animal" is weak in its failure to analyse the people serving in local government. It has little to say about the people going into the new devolved parliaments, and few words about the MPs who get on with the job in a focused and diligent manner.

Paxman spends much too much time on "characters" like Gerald Nabarro or Neil and Christine Hamilton and, therefore, inevitably reinforces what seems to be the author's underlying prejudice.  By contrast, not a mention of someone as significant as say Shirley Williams or Ann Widdecombe. 

In "Politics", Aristotle wrote that aidos, shame, would attach to the citizen who refused to play their part. He said that "we are not solitary pieces in a game of chequers."  Presenting politics as a high calling, and reminding people of their duty to defend hard won rights, is incumbent on anyone who loves democracy.   Whilst Paxman concedes that we cannot disinvent politicians he says nothing about what we can do to stimulate a new generation.

Paxman quotes Tom Paine's dictum about politics being a necessary evil.

In "Common Sense" (1776) Paine wrote that "society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness", the one cultivating and uniting our best impulses, the other restraining our vices: "the first is a patron, the last a punisher."  Paine also saw the state as "a badge of lost innocence."

Surely an appreciation of the role of the politician in seeking to defend that innocence and to withstand the various forms of wickedness should be at the heart of the political call.   

He dismisses "single issue fanatics" without considering how people with causes frequently develop a much broader agenda (although, paradoxically, when the single issue politician is ex-BBC man, Martin Bell, it's heroism).

The first question to always ask about a politician is "what are their causes?" and if they have none you know all you need to know about their motives. So hurrah for Bell and for many others who have enriched political life rather than themselves.

"The Political Animal" could do with more depth about the great men and women of politics: more about the "wilderness years" of Churchill and MacMillan; more about the willingness of Gladstone to smash his party on the rocks because of his political principles; and at least some mention of the extraordinary achievements of William Wilberforce or Lord Shaftesbury whose heroic efforts led to great social change. Neither, of course, became Government Ministers.

It could do with less psycho-babble, shades of Leo Abse, about whether "miserable children", unloved or orphaned children, inevitably become our political leaders. It could do with less superiority -"politics attracts low fliers" - less of a metropolitan orientation, less of an Oxford Union obsession, and more understanding of what inspires people to enter the lists.

Paxman is a highly intelligent man (who should perhaps wear it a little more lightly and seek to dazzle us less with his compendious knowledge). At times The Political Animal has a breathlessness necessary for the auto-cue and time-controlled studio debates but unnecessary in a wordsmith. He is often onto a really good point and then frustrates by not taking us deep enough. He opens some rich seams which deserved to be more deeply mined.

Paxman dedicates his book in the hope of encouraging others. I am unsure whether it will have that effect but if the politicians don't like some of what they see in the mirror it may do some good.