Timeless in its wisdom, the book Parkinson’s Law is of course famous for Parkinson’s law itself: that ‘work expands to fill the time available for its completion’. But scattered through the now 60-year-old book’s pages of tongue-in-cheek social science and cod-mathematical equations are remarks that lodged themselves deep in my thoughts when first I read the book as a young man. Stray observations keep resurfacing as being funny — yes — and flippant, I suppose, but these thoughts are more than flippantly funny: they contain too the germs of deep truths.
‘It is now known,’ wrote C. Northcote Parkinson, ‘that men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.’
And more than 40 years of close observation of political life have convinced me that unhappiness, personal frustration or emotional imbalance are among the principal stimuli to a career in politics. Fame is not the only spur: ambition may take root in a troubled interior life, too; and on this page I’ve elaborated before on my theory that politics as a career disproportionately attracts people who are a bit crazy, troubled or lost.
But in recent years I’ve made another discovery. An intense interest in current affairs from the viewpoint of spectator rather than participant is also a common indicator of a life going wrong. People who are in trouble mentally, in their careers or in their relationships, tend to develop strong opinions and feelings about the political scene, and to follow the scene with more intense interest than those whose lives are going well.
To the practitioners of politics first (and be clear that I don’t exclude myself from this analysis). Many years ago I wrote a book, Great Parliamentary Scandals, that took readers on a tour d’horizon of some of the more memorable falls from grace in British politics.
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