Losing hurts, but there’s life after politics

Layton Andrews

To be honest, I’m not going to fret too much about the fate of any Conservative member who may lose their seat this week, especially those who have been complicit in steering our politics towards an unsatisfactory, anti-democratic and often racist populism.

But former Plaid Cymru chief executive Dafydd Tristan was right when he said this week that all those who ran should be hugely grateful for making our democratic system work.

So let us think for a moment this week about those who suffer defeat after years of public service, and who suffer defeat through no fault of their own.

Losing hurts. I’ve experienced it. So have a lot of people I know. Here’s a slide that I’ve used many times over the last few years when I talk about what’s different about working in a political environment, learning from failure, and what drives people in politics.

Ed Balls

The slide shows a picture of Ed Balls in his Strictly Come Dancing costume and I ask: “What do Leighton Andrews and Ed Balls have in common?” No, I don’t dance, I explain, and then say: “We both lost our jobs doing live broadcasts at 5am!”

It’s a brutal way to die, and even worse when it’s unexpected. Former Scottish Minister Jim Murphy lost his seat in 2015. He later wrote: “One of the personal downsides of losing as an MP is the immediacy of it all: addressing a nearly empty hall from a packed stage in the middle of the night.

“You say each line behind a stiff smile, pretending to be happy that someone else is leaving to take on the same job you joined. For the next few weeks, your friends will talk to you as if you were seriously ill, whispering prayers for a full recovery.”

A few weeks ago I wrote about the need to remove the death metaphor from politics, but it is a recurring theme in the loss of ministerial posts and parliamentary seats.

“Attending my own funeral is not such a great thing,” Ed Balls has written. He justified it by saying, “Being in a senior position and probably never again to hold high political office, the end of a career is treated like a death.”

Professor Jane Roberts, a former leader of Camden Council and child psychiatrist, has written a book about politicians losing their jobs.

She did a lot of research and noted that some of the people she interviewed were “very emotionally rough.”

The manner of defeat, the extent to which people had plans for a life outside politics, and levels of personal resilience were important coping factors that were more pronounced for those who lived in the hinterland, had strong family and social networks, found a role quickly, and saw clear recognition for their contributions and skills.

They were less subject to what John Keane calls “office addiction.”

I was lucky: I had taught at Cardiff University before being elected to Parliament, and I knew I wanted to return there to teach and research.

Academic Writing

I continued to write academic papers as a backbencher, published some academic papers, lectured at universities and took notes on what I wanted to teach – in other words, I had achieved what I wanted to do, just five years sooner than originally planned.

And that’s a lesson for those being elected this week, some of whom may not have thought they’d be elected six weeks ago.

The lesson is to remember that your elected political career will end, so be prepared. Don’t think this will last forever. Think about what you’ll do when it does.

Maintaining hinterlands and friends beyond politics.

Sometimes people go into an election expecting to lose and are surprised to survive, as was the case for many Labour MPs in 2017, who held a vigil in Parliament’s bar when the election was decided, only to then find themselves back at the polls after Theresa May’s disastrous election campaign.

Unlike them, I did not go into the 2016 state assembly elections with the intention of losing. However, three days before the election, while campaigning in Marudi, I felt that things were not going as well as they had at the beginning of the campaign.

I spent many sleepless nights thinking about what I would say if I lost, so thankfully I was ready when the moment came early Friday morning.

Regarding my loss of seat, I wrote the following after the event: “In 1992, Conservative Chairman Chris Patten led John Major’s Conservative Party to victory over Labour, but lost his own seat of Bath to the Liberal Democrats. In 2016, as a member of Welsh Labour’s Electoral Committee, I played a role in helping to steer Welsh Labour’s election campaign this year. We fended off an expected Conservative challenge, retaining 29 out of 30 seats, but losing my own seat to Plaid Cymru.”

Plaid Cymru

Nobody can blame our campaign. Labour in Rhondda did not lose to Plaid Cymru. The constituency was heavily campaigned twice between May 2015 and polling day, and there was also telephone campaigning. We visited over 30,000 houses and spoke to 20,000 people. We had the most up-to-date data ever.

Indeed, Pride’s Dafydd Tristan told me he had carried out an “intensity analysis” of the campaign in Rhondda which showed how close the Labour and Pride campaigns were.

Obviously Buffy Williams has since reclaimed her seat from Labour in 2021. But I want to make sure that “loss leaves a mark”.

Losing hurts. First there’s the perception of rejection and the lasting psychological impact of that: the place you were representing has rejected you and doesn’t want you as their representative.

Second, the defeat would be public, in front of the cameras on live television, the defeat would be repeated on television and radio news bulletins throughout the day, and overall, it was not the time to be turning to social media, particularly Twitter at the time.

In reality, there are more good comments than bad, but there are usually one or two people who like to make it annoyingly clear.

The third is disappointment at not being able to continue doing the job I loved.

Fourth, the loss of a promising future. In my case, I expected, and was told, that I would remain in the Cabinet.

The fifth, which comes a few weeks later, is the loss of the in-person social networks that you have been a part of for a long time.

Sixth, there is an overwhelming sense of having let people down – particularly my supporters, but also, of course, my staff who will lose their jobs (although my staff were lucky in that they were able to find work under the new AM quite quickly).

But at the same time, compensation was slowly beginning to trickle in and even the weekend after the defeat was starting to pay off.

Family time

Time with family – I had one granddaughter then, but now I have four grandchildren – time to see friends. Going on holiday – some obligations were immediately lifted – I no longer had to tell the Prime Minister if I went abroad – and I got tickets to Wales’ first Euros match in Bordeaux.

I quickly decided not to seek nomination to try again for Rhonda in 2021, allowing me to start thinking about what alternative opportunities might arise. That autumn I was fortunate enough to re-enroll at Cardiff University, but that’s another story.

Jane Roberts writes that “politics is the promise of the future.” Involuntary retirement, in particular, is not a topic that politicians are particularly comfortable with. They don’t want to think about “future death.”

As I write in my book, political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s concept of “nativity” can help us understand this more deeply.

Writing about the active life, or “vita activa,” Arendt states that “action,” which brings human beings into relationship with one another, is the essential condition of “all political life.”

When people are removed from political or ministerial office, they lose the possibility of taking action, of starting again, or, as Arendt puts it, of being “reborn.”

Or, in the words of most politicians, it robs them of the opportunity to “make a difference” as politicians and ministers. No wonder so many former politicians struggle to find, as Jane puts it, “new stories for the future” – what Yannis Gabriel and colleagues talk about as a form of “narrative coping” to give meaning and comfort. Their political death is the loss of the possibility of birth.

support

Politics is about “promises for the future,” as Jane says, so political parties are not good at supporting the defeated in the aftermath of defeat. A defeated politician is, in a way, embarrassed. Political parties are in this respect very similar to other organizations: they continue to exist with their own logic and momentum, beyond the involvement of individuals, regardless of their past roles. There is no need to be too sensitive about this.

Loss of political office is different from loss of office in many other fields, not only because it is public, but also because it is the loss of not just a job but a vocation.

One way to address this issue in the future is to stop thinking of elected office as a permanent career.

We need to encourage our elected politicians to make room for other things in life, to maintain a sense of other possibilities, and to refrain from seeing political life as the whole of their worth.

This is easier said than done as political life can be addictive for many, but there is life after high-level politics and there is life beyond our elected representatives.

Six weeks after I lost my seat, the UK voted to leave the EU. The defeat was a personal loss for me. Brexit was a tragedy. I immediately began campaigning again….

This article first appeared in Layton Andrews’ newsletter, Welcome to Ukania.