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I don’t hate the idea, my main reservation is that the civil servants I know are smarter than the MPs I’ve met have seemed… but yeah, maybe there’s a way to fix it.

At present they get a ‘voted out’ payment (bit like a redundancy payment) anyway though.

I guess Pr would get rid of safe seats where the MP can get away with murder.

In some LATAM experience, proportional representation has created safe seats and guaranteed jobs for party leaders. The worst ones are the leaders of small, often ideologically-imaged parties (eg, that claim they’re ecologists or for minority group rights), that don’t win a seat anywhere, but they’re personally guaranteed national legislator jobs.

Sure, the UK might come up with a more clever system, but PR does create niches for sly snakes to stay.

True, but we need the least bad system- which FPTP manifestly is not.

2 kids in nursery and a London mortgage makes money disappear like a muthafucker.

Not sure what LATAM means but interesting anyway - yeah I can see that could be the case.

Latin America(n). Mentioned only because I know the region well and PR is common-ish.

Good jobs the majority of MP's don't need a mortgage or nursery in London so can afford to earn less

Ah of course, ta

I dislike the idea of attracting the "right" kind of people by offering more money as if the reason we've got the wrong kind of people is that all the right ones are off practicing law, writing newspaper columns, selling shares or running factories and a few extra quid and they'll jump over, putting their probably highly developed but specific skills towards looking after the rest of us. People keep saying they know great surgeons or whatever that would be good at being an MP. I think there will be just as many good care workers, builders, lifeguards, shop workers and binmen who would also make just as good MPs but the route to doing so is currently so obscure and elitist that higher wages would be more of a barrier if anything because it becomes even more of a job for the few who earn that amount rather than the many who may be just as good at being an MP but lack the means to do so, it's not really a career path laid out at school and working class people coming through the unions doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. Maybe the way to attract the right kind of people is to offer civil service jobs with progression towards becoming a potential MP where useful MPing skills can be honed, from what I can see, while most MPs are well educated, being particularly clever isn't necessary.

Michael Sandel is Professor of Government Theory at Harvard University Law School and it takes him 300 pages to make this argument in The Tyranny of Merit. @snottyotter does it in 1 paragraph, thereby beautifully proving it's true.

It's worth mentioning that seven of Clement Attlee's government were ex coal miners and they did pretty well forming the NHS so I'm not sure the issue is wages, so much as the motivation for the job

No one is saying that people from low paid professions can’t be good MPs. but trying to argue that the cost of living / wage payoff is the same today as it was in the 1940s is ridiculous

higher wages would be more of a barrier if anything because it becomes even more of a job for the few who earn that amount

I don’t disagree if you’re saying that we shouldn’t only be looking to attract MPs from a variety of backgrounds at all, but think this is ridiculously patronising, sorry… no one i know who earns a low amount would be put off a job because the pay is higher.

I do agree that different routes to being an MP would be good. Not sure that has anything to do with how much they are paid, to be honest - no one I have ever met has been put off a job because the pay was too high, but loads of people have been put off because it is too low.

no one i know who earns a low amount would be put off a job because the pay is higher.

£30k job to someone on minimum wage seems attainable and within reach as a worker, but a nice increase all the same, £80k job to someone on minimum wage is fucking loads, four times what they earn, should I even bother going for a job like that, it's not really the world I know? It's rich people money (despite the perfectly valid arguements for it being difficult to own a London house, posh car and private school a few kids on just that much). £150k job, lol, that's millionaires and stuff, I know my place.

I’ve been on minimum wage and had other friends on minimum wage. No one I have ever spoken to has had those views, and its so regressive - you’re effectively saying people can’t jump up from minimum wage.

Respectfully, I have heard people working in lower paid jobs say that they’re afraid of going for a certain position that seemed attainable until the compensation makes it seem like it’s out of their league. It does happen, and I suspect that in a stratified society like the UK it might not be all that rare.

I am surprised - I’ve not heard that, and have done my time working in minimum wage jobs.

I would be very surprised if someone who was put off a job for that reason wouldn’t be put off being an MP for many, many other reasons, though - which would bring the question of whether that is right (i.e. how much do you say that means the job isn’t for them vs. How much do you try and get them to do it anyway). I do think the job isn’t for the faint hearted - MPs get death threats, etc - and whilst that isn’t right, it is the reality

I think they should be able to but a £100k odd a year job currently filled with Etonians and bankers isn't really on the radar of a chip shop worker, cleaner or bike mechanic, if it was advertised with a salary next to it I think I'd just look past it, despite being qualified as far as I can tell.

I know people that see a £50k job as something from another world that they don't feel they could ever part of - something beyond aspiration. I don't think that's too hard to imagine.

Just the other day I was thinking about what kind of wage I should be aiming at with my next job and I remembered how when I worked in customer service I started at 22k, after a few years and a promotion I'd gone up to 28k. I distinctly remember back then thinking about how much my head of department must earn, what's actually realistic and I settled on around 60k and thought maybe one day if I'm lucky I might be able to get near that but it's such a huge number how could someone like me ever get there, maybe in 15 years time.

Fair points, I guess I just think that the barriers stopping people from more diverse backgrounds being MPs are highly unlikely to be the fact that it seems too well paid. Being put off higher paid jobs (if it happens) seems to be more to do with a perception of how serious or demanding the job is, but I really doubt that goes away for an MP even if they’re paid far less - everyone can see the stress, pressure, public scrutiny, so won’t think ‘ah it is within my scope as salary is reasonable’.

"Exactly. Make it a valid career choice - with pay equivalent to the responsibility, which would mean that people who would otherwise be senior directors in other avenues of life would consider being an MP."

So one of the best-compensated public sector jobs, with the biggest perks (expenses, paid positions on committees, government and shadow roles) is not currently a valid career choice?

I hate to think what the golf club take is on us normal public sector employees, for whom a bog standard backbench role would be a step up?

Am I inherently less able, or have I just made invalid choices?

Very expensive but it’s a choice they opt for in the end.

perception of how serious or demanding the job is

Support worker for people with learning disabilities and mental health needs is serious and demanding, much moreso than most people's work, they get paid fuck all. You advertise that job for £100k and people would assume it's a misprint or cabbage pickers getting £1000 an hour are all over the papers. What is valued with high wages isn't necessarily the hardest work, Low paid workers aren't less hard workers or under less stress, probably moreso, if from slightly different directions. People doing low paid jobs don't always have much in the way of progression out of them, and a step up from £16000 to £20k can seem like a lot, so wages up there at £80k and beyond can seem like they're for other people. I don't think that's right but it's the way you get treated and it becomes pretty ingrained and internalised, I'm glad you don't feel that way yourself.

Snotters for PM imo

Wages are a bit high for me.