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.
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