AIBU to want politicians with strong academic and business backgrounds?

There's not a single privately educated person in the current Cabinet.

Several - Lammy, Streeting, Rayner (who I assume will be back soon) - come from very humble backgrounds.

PS I see @Badbadbunny is making the same point about ministerial specialisms

So can you give us an example of a major political figure from the last 20 years of whom you do approve, OP? Webb sounds good but is not a major figure, and the Centre for Government Reform is too new.

David Cameron has a First in PPE from Oxford. He gave us the disaster that is Brexit, because he could not be bothered to exert himself to do relationships within his Party with those he didn’t deem important. Neutral sources (ONS, Bloomberg, IFS) concur it’s cost us 6-8% of GDP every year since.

FWIW I agree with @Snorlaxo that it would be good to align ministers’ portfolios with their expertise. This means they will hail from various backgrounds. All this chopping and changing seems odd.

Eagerly awaiting to hear whom you do commend, recent-ish past or present. TIA

12 months in and Mark Carney is doing well in the polls. Currently he has lots of public support.

But when it's run by people who are financially innumerate and financially illiterate, there's no money to pay for the public services needed. We need a balance.

A good start would be only appointing someone with a legal qualification as attorney general, someone with an accounting/financial qualification as Chancellor, someone who has been a teacher or otherwise employed in education as education secretary etc. That way, at least the people responsible for each department have some relevant knowledge and experience of their remit so can challenge their permanent secretaries and maybe even come up with some sensible ideas of their own!

It's pretty rare for someone to have completed education and moved straight into being a SAHM without ever doing a day's work. Perhaps someone very young on benefits or very wealthy with a trust fund?

But no, I think some life skills are necessary, parenting isn't enough on it's own.

I want people with the ability to manage their teams, who know what they need to make decisions and will instruct the best people to bring them that information. Who will listen to a range of experts and apply critical thinking to make decisions after weighing up all the necessary data and evidence.
I want them to make decisions that align with their manifesto and the values, ethics and direction of travel they outlined to win my vote.
I want good diplomats who will represent our interests globally because the wider world feels threatening and our position precarious.
I couldn't care less what job they did prior to being in government or what level of formal education they recieved provided they have those skills and attributes.

I am. Are you aware of how many lawyers, outside of the legal firms, are run by lawyers. (Clue... not many!).

I might give this place a miss next Thursday, it’s going to be unbearable.

Gosh, I'll be glad when the elections are over. Then all the Farage enthusiasts can reap what they are sowing all over MN.

Why does having run a business qualify a person as a politician? Look at D Trump! (I believe he once managed to make a loss running a casino). Doing a good job of destroying the world economy though

Starmer has high academic qualifications, as does Lammy. Your post doesn't make sense, YABU.

You should listen to/read the journalist Tom Baldwin on Starmer, in this podcast (free) or in the weekly newspaper, The New World

https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/podcast/the-starmer-conundrum-with-special-guest-tom-baldwin/

To paraphrase Baldwin (who knows Starmer well, as he wrote a biography of Starmer), Keir Starmer is the nearest to "an ordinary person" it is possible to be in the post of Prime Minister. And look what he has to deal with ...

Farage? Well he certainly fools a lot of people.

Man of the people he is not. His closeness to Trump could be a problem for him.

And why did he receive £5m just before deciding to stand as MP?

@TopPocketFind, it doesn’t please me
to say this, but I’ll go for it! Nigel Farage.

Many will say he is not reading the room, but creating the room.

And again, same sentiment, sometimes Andy Burham.

Who is reading the public mood?

I'd rather have some politicians whose lives more closely resembled the lives of most people in this country. The hordes that have followed that golden PPE Oxbridge to advisor to politician to MP route are extraordinarily out of touch with so many people's lives and I think it's been very damaging. (And I say that as an Ox graduate myself who was at college with a lot of these 2nd-raters.)

@CurlewKate, what world experience do they really have?

David Lammy most probably has one of the most elite educations of many MPs.

They don’t come across as worldly to me. They certainly are not reading the public mood at the moment.

Ah. Well, I’d rather a well educated person with real world experience, personally.

I disagree. I don’t actually consider them to be academic. Highly educated, yes but not academic in the essence of what it is to be an academic. They don’t come across as deep thinkers, researchers or experts. They are highly professional but not academic in my experience.

We have too many career politicians. Who will say anything as long as it gets them voted in. Whether they believe in what they spout forth or not is irrelevant.
Problems have arisen as now we are no longer in Europe problems cannot be thrown over the fence as in we would like to but Brussels rules mean we cannot. Accountability to Westminster is back. And some are finding that tricky.

Some mentioned Elon Musk. Hopeless in Government. He sacked a load of people who had worked with an unblemished record accusing them of fraud. Some not unreasonably decided they were insulted by this. And took him to Court. The Court had to reinstate all of them. As his notion they were all frauds and wasteful he was unable to prove. He had none. The Court gave him time to provide evidence. He could not. What he had done was sack people on the basis of a sentiment and a line that sounded good to other people. But had no basis whatsoever in reality.

Bringing people in from the private sector to ‘show how it is done’ is nothing new. Often it is people with an eye on contracts, opportunities.
Nothing whatsoever to do with the public good.

Lammy, Starmer and Reeves are all highly academic. Bizarre that you would suggest otherwise.

Same. I love it that we have an MP who still does shifts as an A&E doctor.

You can dislike Starmer as much as you want or not think he is a good PM, but why on earth would you say he isn’t ‘highly academically successful’? It just makes YOU sound uneducated.

This

I want our politicians to be representative of our society as a whole, with a broad range of experience and insights from many different spheres. So that they can genuinely represent the interests of everyone in our society.