{"id":85741,"date":"2025-09-09T08:00:56","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T07:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=85741"},"modified":"2025-09-09T08:00:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T07:00:56","slug":"lessons-from-prime-ministers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/09\/09\/lessons-from-prime-ministers\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from prime ministers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0headlines section<\/a> of The Guardian is covered by the\u00a0suggestion that Boris Johnson profited, quite deliberately, from his period in office as Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

What surprises me about this is that anyone is surprised by it.<\/p>\n

Wasn\u2019t this always very obviously the case?<\/p>\n

And wasn\u2019t this man always, and only, motivated by greed, selfishness, and a desperate desire to be noticed, which can only have been an indication of a feeling of being unloved, presumably during his childhood?<\/p>\n

My suggestion is that we wait until, or if, Farage becomes prime minister before we fully understand just what the exploitation of public office for private gain means. Remember, he is trying to copy Trump in everything, and Trump has turned commercial abuse of office into an art form.<\/p>\n

There is, however, something much more interesting in this, and that is how inappropriate those people who have served as our prime minister, at least over the last 15 years, have truly been. I am not suggesting that anyone who wants to be prime minister is normal, because that, by definition, cannot be the case: you have to be particularly weird to want to hold this office. Three things have, however, become much more apparent over those years.<\/p>\n

Firstly, from the time of David Cameron onwards, those who have been prime minister have given little indication of any enthusiasm for holding the post. In every case, it looks more likely that they became prime minister not because of any conviction or desire to do good, but because they wished to satisfy a personal need. Doing so very publicly did, and has, done none of them any good. Being prime minister has simply exposed all their weaknesses, and none of their strengths \u2014 if they ever had any.<\/p>\n

Secondly, none of the heirs apparent at present have any particular strength to offer either, at least in the mainstream parties.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, and perhaps more significantly \u2014 and maybe something to return to at some point \u2014 is the creeping idea that this post may just be impossible to hold.<\/p>\n

That could be because of the 24-hour demands of the job.<\/p>\n

It might be because of the genuine internationalisation of politics that makes extraordinary demands on a prime minister, who has to be able to travel almost anywhere on demand, and still perform domestically as if fatigue were never an issue.<\/p>\n

But, moving beyond these purely pragmatic observations, there is something more to this suggestion, and that is that we might have turned this post \u2014 and government itself, alongside much else in our society \u2014 into something so complex and amorphous that the demands it creates are beyond the ability of any one person.<\/p>\n

There was some discussion in the comments on this blog yesterday on the nature of a good society and what a socially beneficial fiscal rule might look like. These are issues that I might also well return to, but let\u2019s just for a moment suppose that the purpose of government is not to promote growth, but instead to protect the well-being of the most vulnerable. And let\u2019s also assume that the purpose of government is not to provide support to the largest companies at the cost of the rest of society, communities, our planet, and smaller enterprises. Instead of assuming that these esoteric goals of uncertain advantage are the purpose of government, let\u2019s presume that politicians were actually required to undertake basic tasks well on behalf of those who were known to be in need.<\/p>\n

In other words, instead of worrying about how they were going to make the richest ever richer, and the largest companies ever larger, suppose that our politicians decided that those parts of society in which the richest live, and the largest companies operate, were not their primary concern, but that the consequences of a failing society were their priority. What then might happen to politics? And how much better might we be able to appraise the role of a politician in that situation, because their success or failure would be so much more obvious. More than that, their policy priorities would become much clearer, giving focus to their work, which all of the incumbents for the last 15 or more years have clearly lacked.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t this reasonable? After all, once we appreciate that government is not dependent upon taxes to pay for its activities \u2014 which are, in essence, paid for by the action of people doing them on behalf of others \u2014 why shouldn\u2019t we ask what might then be best done, and then expect our politicians to focus on that goal? And why on earth would we then think that the job of government in that case was to make politicians, the wealthy, and the companies that serve them ever richer? Yet that is the idea we have actually been pursuing \u2014 and Boris Johnson was the result, with Nigel Farage to come.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t we need to change the job of the government and the prime minister to make it simpler, in other words? Isn\u2019t their job one of helping those in need to live, because the wealthy can look after themselves, as they have always done?<\/p>\n

Thoughts are welcome.<\/p>\n

\n

Comments\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

When commenting, please take note of this blog\u2019s comment policy,\u00a0which is available here<\/a>. Contravening this policy will result in comments being deleted before or after initial publication at the editor\u2019s sole discretion and without explanation being required or offered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0headlines section of The Guardian is covered by the\u00a0suggestion that Boris Johnson profited, quite deliberately, from his period in office as Prime Minister. What surprises
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