Selaine Saxby was the MP for North Devon.
Finding myself with more time on my hands than hoped for this summer, I was at least able to enjoy the Olympics, and cannot help but observe the parallels with the general election. Maybe there is more to be learnt politically from our Olympians.
The Paris games started much like our own election campaign did, with a very, very wet opening. Fortunately for Paris, things improved from then on, but the Conservative campaign notably did not.
But the comparisons go on far from there. Pundits talk of those favourites for gold medals having targets on their backs, of the extra pressure, and how many of them have not achieved gold, like us incumbent MPs where tactical voting overtook any local achievements in the drive for national political change.
But the accompanying narrative when Olympians miss their medals, the focus on the immense achievement of coming second or third, or the frustration of coming fourth is so many miles from the dismay of so many outgoing Conservative MPs on the night of July 4th.
Indeed, the podium at the Olympics is a time of celebration with praise and celebration for all medal holders. Those of us who had to stand and be jeered by opposing sides on a podium to be told we are now unemployed don’t get the sense we achieved anything coming second or third.
Years of hard work got wiped out overnight and for many longer serving colleagues even more. So many constituents desperate for change have so little understanding of our political system that they have no idea of the personal torture that their collective votes unleashed.
I have had a friend say to me “Well it’s not like you’re unemployed is it, you just sit on the other side now”. But no I am unemployed, as are the seven staff I have made redundant, which stops in one of their cases a decade of engagement with local residents. The hidden cost to constituents, of casework is now not being dealt with efficiently. However good a new MP is it takes a while to get to grips with setting up two new offices.
Far too few of those newly elected have an understanding of the role they got. Many of them may fall a little short of their predecessors. I may be biased, but I know my team has always been inundated with thank you cards and gifts for helping constituents resolve issues from delays renewing driving licenses, to getting bus stops put in.
That accumulated knowledge of how to get things done through government and council departments takes years of experience to build up, and party politics means we do not build on that experience, but we lose it with every seat we lose.
Like Olympians, we have to wait four more years to have another chance. But many of us cannot wait or will have to be creative with future employers about whether we may decide to stand again if an opportunity arises. Unlike Olympians, our teams don’t stay with us to rebuild, or restart training.
Indeed former MPs get to nurse their wounds pretty much alone, with those who want to be MPs in the future like vultures around the pickings of which seats might be easier to win next time. I wish parliamentary candidates and former MPs could learn more from British Cycling.
As we look for a new leader, I believe we need to find a political Dave Brailsford. When he became head of British Cycling in 2002, the team had just a single gold in its 76-year history. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics his squad won seven out of 10 available gold medals on the track.
The Harvard Business Review reports that “Sir Dave applied a theory of marginal gains to cycling – he gambled that if the team broke down everything they could think of that goes into competing on a bike, and then improved each element by 1%, they would achieve a significant aggregated increase in performance.”
There is no National Lottery funding to help improve political training programmes, make incremental improvements, or even start to think about a strategy in this case for us to rebuild our broken party, voluntarily and at Westminster.
We lack funds, and we lack the leadership shown by some of these Olympic coaches, and the insight that former Olympians can now bring to the sofa of an evening. We lack the compassion of TV presents understanding how hard it is to lose when you’ve put so much into trying to win. I’m not sure any election night coverage spared much of a thought for those of us coming second.
I am no Olympic athlete, even if I felt like one completing 38,000 steps on July 4th desperately trying to hold my seat. But having been a fitness instructor for over 20 years, the analogies are endless, and I take much comfort from the belief shown by so many of our beaten Olympians that a podium finish is an achievement and that they will go back to basics, rebuild, train hard, improve and return to fight again.
As a party, and as individual politicians, we could learn so much from our sporting leaders and Olympic champions. Many of us felt a bit like Matthew Hudson-Smith when he explained he had no idea Quincy Hall was coming in the 400m final. Yes, he knew the risk, we all did on July 4th, but it doesn’t alter the horror of it happening.
I hope our new Leader will look to the Olympics, and the teams that deliver our successful athletes for inspiration, as for those of us now unemployed, former MPs, or our fantastic teams there was no glory in our podium finish. There are no silver medals.
