Time for the PM to earn his spurs as a teacher

SO, GORDON Brown might become a teacher when he finally leaves politics. Such is the low ebb of faith in our political classes that one's left wondering what that claim is designed to achieve.

Presumably it puts clear blue, modest, Old Labour water between Gordon Brown and the man who presumably haunts his every waking moment – Tony "Consultant" Blair. It encourages us to think Teacher Gordon is really one of us – in contrast to Boardroom Tony.

It tells us the Prime Minister is thinking about life beyond the political grave. The message – he is hurt and human. The subtext – watch what you wish for, it could actually happen.

If any of this is designed to elicit sympathy or encourage a lull in hostilities, lest the unpopular but capable captain leaves the ship, I doubt it will work.

The Iranians take to the streets, the Icelanders pelt parliaments with eggs and the Americans seize the chance for once-in-a-lifetime change – but the British greet political chaos with derision. The public's been nursing its wrath for years, so there are vast, compost-heaped quantities of derision available, ably deployed every week on Question Time, which has become a medieval stocks for the television age, with David Dimbleby as the gentleman torturer.

Politicians trot out obligatory platitudes to laughter, hoots, boos, heckling and, finally, damning judgments delivered unblinkingly by soft-faced audience members – teachers in all probability.

After listening to one tortuous account of the fine, ethical judgments involved in claiming expenses, a young, smiling woman commented: "You should all be evicted from your second homes immediately and made to stay in youth hostels." To horribly disconnected MPs, these harpies must appear like reincarnations of Hitler Youth.

But the truth, quite evidently, is that the non-chattering, non-expense-claiming class has made up its collective mind about MPs – and is now stonily impervious to protestations and special pleading. Indeed, the smiling women delivering coups de grce every Thursday night resemble nothing more than the tricoteuses who sat knitting at the foot of the guillotine in revolutionary France.

Written over each stunned and well-worn political face is a sudden realisation: These people hate us and they aren't listening to a word we're saying. Rarely has a modern adage been more apt – talk to the hand.

Whether MPs are all offenders, or even the worst offenders, in a world of professional liggers is irrelevant in this fevered atmosphere. Politicians wheeled out on TV and radio every week are proxies for every fat cat that has managed to get away. To mix metaphors, a culprit in the hand is worth two in the bush. In a world where most people have never claimed any expenses (never mind fiddled any), the bush appears to be full of guilty men and women: men such as Fred Goodwin, who retreated to Europe before offering surrender terms – 4 million for public acceptance and reintegration into Scottish society. It's interesting to note that boycotts still work so effectively, and that Sir Fred values a hassle-free walk to the Morningside shops so highly.

I suspect that grand gesture will get him somewhere with fellow bankers and nowhere with the majority of RBS customers and staff, who believe they would have been sacked, disgraced and possibly prosecuted for generating a tiny part of the colossal RBS collapse. Where does all this hostility towards politicians leave Gordon the would-be teacher?

His choice of Second Life says a lot about the Prime Minister. He wants to be helpful. He's happier with small people than large people. He'd prefer to be seen as a guide not a leader. And even if he hated the staffroom small-talk, he would love one thing about the classroom job: teachers are never wrong – not in front of pupils anyway – and everyone's agreed teachers only exercise unassailable authority to do good.

This is delusional. Most teachers are intelligent, well-adjusted, selfless, cheery angels. Some, however, are crabbit individuals who have spotted a job that gives them authority without having to work at it, allows them to demand respect without earning it, and offers the socially inadequate and the terminal bully a ready-made meal of status, veneration and lifelong power.

This is not to attack teachers but to include them and every profession in the maelstrom of motivation circulating around all public life. To suggest control freakery is absent from teaching, nursing or even volunteering is a recipe for letting powerful personalities dominate.

Gordon Brown may make a superb teacher. Alec Wood – a forceful left-wing Edinburgh council leader possessed of a slightly clunking fist – adapted his belief in the command economy to become an excellent and much-loved headteacher of an award-winning school.

It would be unfair if politicians became subject to judgment without end and permanent social exclusion, when even criminals cannot be hounded by their past, thanks to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.

MPs are not alone in feeling persecuted. White, male, middle-aged, veteran activists at the Chartered Institute of Housing conference expressed hurt and anger when it was suggested women, young people and ethnic minorities might not come forward as tenants' representatives with the "usual suspects" at the helm.

"We volunteered when no-one else did, we turned up when others went home, we learned the ropes, challenged landlords, won cases and now we're just the 'usual suspects' – part of the problem?" And yet many are.

After a lifetime of public service, talented and experienced people should be encouraged to mentor new talent and move on, not hang on. In any major life change, a belief in one's prior entitlement to status and inclusion is the enemy of acceptance.

The critical test for any new recruit is whether they try to earn their spurs – or act like they're already wearing them. Would-be teachers are no exception.