The well-heeled elite don’t have a clue about life

It seems we’re only too happy to leave the running of country to people who have no practical experience of the real world.

Sir John Major remember him?

Of course you do. He was our 50 shades of grey ex Prime Minister, a congenial stand-in after Thatcher was unceremoniously bumped by her ain.

Well this week he swapped his cricket whites for a mothballed suit and came out throwing all sorts of googlies at what he called the private school educated elite and the well-heeled middle class.

He claimed the Tories weren’t doing enough for the downtrodden pensioners and that interest rates should go back to 3-5% on savings.

But Major kept his deadliest spinners for Labour, knocking them for six over the slowdown in social mobility and the abolition of grammar schools in England.

He finished by stating that in every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or affluent middle class.

With his working class background, he found that shocking. And for once I agreed with him.

However, I thought he missed a very important point the fact that out of the 90 MPs who have never held a ‘proper job’, it’s Labour who are the biggest culprits and not those privileged Tory toffs from Oxford.

A shocking 52 of them have never experienced a day’s work outside of politics. Yes, a fifth of the Labour Westminster ranks are now considered ‘professional politicians’, which is pretty lame for a party claiming to be on the side of the working man.

Even more damning is that there are just 25 former manual workers serving as MPs on the left compared to 98 way back in 1979.

Scarily, one in seven MPs overall have never held a job outside politics and many others have only ever worked as lobbyists or PR advisors for politicians.

Eighty-six are lawyers, which I suppose says it all.

I couldn’t find any facts and figures for our own MSPs in Holyrood, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a similar ratio of unskilled balloons floating around there, too.

It seems we’re only too happy to leave the running of country to people who have no practical experience of the real world.

In all areas of government, including councils, we are mostly governed by people who haven’t the skills or the training to deal with their portfolios because they never worked in that field.

It’s insane. Would you ask a teacher to fix your car? A lollipop man to fly a plane. A bin man to remove your appendix? No!

You pick the best and most skilled to do the chosen task. Yet in government it seems we’re happy to let those with no experience run our country.

For the Coalition’s part, most of the cabinet have actually worked, but it is the positions they hold now that matter.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond made electrocardiograph electrodes. Should he not be in charge of the NHS and Jeremy Hunt, whose dad was an admiral, in charge of defence?

As for Theresa May, instead of Home Secretary should she not be Chancellor of the Exchequer, given that she did work for a spell as a financial adviser.

Come to think of it, George Osborne’s closest encounter to money was when he did a week’s work at Selfridges.

Ed Davey, energy minister, worked in a pie factory for a week which is probably why he’s so good at telling porkies!

Major was right about the political elite, but maybe he’d do better to acknowledge it’s the lack of experience MPs have in the areas they deal with that is the most pressing issue.

Equally, I don’t remember him ever pointing out the problem with the privileged elite when he was PM.

He was quite happy to sit and jaw along with the toffs in his party until he was bumped out by Blair’s mob. And guess what they were just as well-heeled.