Every cook shall govern? Not if Lord Lang is in charge

Posted on Wednesday 9 February, 2011
Filed Under Conservative Party, Politics

 

THE RT Hon Lord Macdonald of Tradeston CBE might pack a peerage and a gong these days. But I’m told he still likes to stress his working class upbringing, including the time he spent as a shipyard apprentice in Glasgow in the late 1950s.

Maybe in his heart of hearts, he even thinks of himself as somehow on the left. After all, he was a member of the International Socialists, forerunner of today’s Socialist Workers’ Party. When SWP founder Tony Cliff died in 2000, Macdonald – at that time a minister in the Blair government – sent the widow a handwritten letter of condolence.

But nowadays he is knocking on a bit, and perhaps his main role in public life is membership of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, a quango which discusses the suitability of former ministers and civil servants taking jobs after leaving crown service. Nobody can remember the last time it issued a ruling that actually stopped anybody doing anything.

Sitting on ACOBA brings Macdonald together with the Rt Hon Lord Lang of Monkton DL, the Lord Dholakia OBE DL, Dame Juliet Wheldon DCB QC, General the Lord Walker of Aldringham GCB CMG CBE DL, Sir Colin Budd KCMG and Sir Hugh Stevenson.

That’s right; four peers, two knights and a token Dame, just to ensure a bit of gender balance. With a line-up like that, some might say it lacks the common touch, and could do with a couple of plebs on board just to keep an eye out on the toffs.

As it happens, Rugby and Cambridge-educated ACOBA chairman Lord Lang was grilled on his outfit’s work by the Commons Public Administration Committee this morning, and just that point was put to him. Here is what he had to say:

Lord Lang told MPs he would be prepared to accept a “lay member”, but added that is should be someone “who had experience and proven success in a relatively important profession or trade – somebody who had achieved distinction – rather than a waitress or bus driver.”

In other words, only chaps – assisted by a solitary chappess – are fit to regulate the doings of other chaps, and even having a guy who was last on the tools half a century ago is stretching it a bit.

I’m not so sure about that. ACOBA sounds to me just the kind of body that could do with a robust injection of busdriver common sense. ‘What’s that? Job at £400,000 a year, mate? Sorry, can’t give you change for that.’

Meanwhile, I am reminded of a quote from Lenin, which Macdonald may even remember from his days as a teenage Trot; every cook shall govern. It’s not a vision that has ever come to pass, but it is still the ideal that should inspire every socialist.

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