Tracey Crouch has resigned as a minister at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, over the Government’s handling of reforms to the rules around fixed-odds betting terminals. I don’t know much about the policy or the events that preceded this, but I know enough about Tracey Crouch to be confident that this is exactly what it seems to be: a minister resigning on point of principle because she could no longer defend the Government’s position on an important issue. If that sounds unusual and perhaps even a bit old-fashioned (politicians don’t do that sort of thing these days, do they?) then that’s probably because Crouch is that sort of politician – the sort who remains an essentially normal, decent human being despite holding high public office.
And more to the point, the sort who doesn’t value that office more highly than other things in life that most non-political folk would naturally see as more important than the job you do: things like happiness, family, self-respect. None of this is to denigrate other politicians who seek and retain high office, making compromises and sacrifices to do so: pretty much every politician I’ve ever known has had moments of doubt and discomfort at the thought that they were doing small things they were ashamed of, in order to do big things they were proud of. My aim here is simply to urge a moment of admiration for Tracey Crouch, the sort of politician who could give politics a good name.
It is routine, in a world where politics often resembles a Twitter spat and where our view of MPs is indelibly coloured by the Daily Telegraph’s revelations about MPs’ expenses to start from the assumption that all politicians are self-serving vermin who...
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in