Observations on political dynasties

The 18th of April is decision day for Erith and Thamesmead Constituency Labour Party, when members select their prospective parliamentary candidate for the next election. Fierce competition is expected: Labour holds so large a majority that it would take an economic collapse of Zimbabwean proportions for the seat to fall into opposition hands.

Striding purposefully into this contest is Georgia Gould. A 22-year-old Oxford graduate, she is the daughter of Philip Gould, pollster to Tony Blair and a high priest of New Labour. Predictably, her presence on the shortlist has prompted cries of nepotism, that she is to be parachuted into a safe seat by her father’s few remaining friends in the party hierarchy. Gould denies the claims – “Georgia has received no preferential treatment whatsoever” – while Alastair Campbell has hailed her “dedication to Labour and progressive causes”.

The issue, however, is surely not Gould’s left-wing credentials but her age. Her “career” to date stretches only so far as having campaigned for Barack Obama last year and worked for Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation. That’s a lot more than most 22-year-olds, and if ever British politics needed fresh blood, it is now. But what we really need is people with experience outside the London media bubble.

How can you empathise with your constituents’ job insecurity if you have never had a job to lose? Similarly, no elected representative can truly understand the significance of rising fuel and food prices and the importance of interest rates if he or she is still living at home and has never had a mortgage or the responsibility of running a household budget.

Gould is not the only Labour progeny seeking public office. Tony Benn’s granddaughter Emily has been chosen as the party’s candidate for East Worthing and Shoreham. Her selection is largely academic, as the constituency is a Tory stronghold. But Benn is only 19. Nineteen!

Is this madness? I asked Charles Kennedy, who was elected to parliament in 1983 at the age of 23. “Westminster is supposed to be a Palace of Varieties, so that would seem to entail a broad spectrum of age groups, as well as social backgrounds or regional or racial diversities,” he told me. “Just because you don’t have as rounded a life as other people, that doesn’t mean that your ability to represent constituents is deficient.”

This argument would be fine in isolation, if one didn’t suspect that Gould’s ascension represented one of those ever more desperate efforts by the main political parties to “engage” with young people – as if no one under the age of 25 would ever think about voting for anyone older than them. The defenestration of Menzies Campbell as Liberal Democrat leader in 2007 seemed in keeping with the same philosophy; at the time, a Sun editorial argued that his departure “proved there is no room for pensioners in today’s cut-throat politics”.

Really? One of the few MPs to emerge from the present crisis with credit is a colleague of Campbell’s: 65-year-old Vincent Cable. And one of the most popular politicians among the young is Boris Johnson – a man whose public image is much more young fogey than young and trendy. If it is hoping to appeal to young voters, perhaps the Labour Party ought to rethink its strategy.

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