Profession politics: rule by lobby group?

In their sometimes cloistered world, operating under the harshest media spotlight of any generation, professional politicos are all too susceptible to the charms and ready-made policy packages of professional lobbyists.

Many of the more prominent lobby groups are made up of people whose careers have followed similar trajectories to those of MPs. At times, those career paths have crossed and closer relationships have formed.

By making themselves relatively accessible to lobby organisations, busy MPs - and ministers in particular - are able to rationalise away their lack of contact with men and women in the street.

Almost imperceptibly, then, a government that is open to lobbyists can become a government that is, in effect, ruled by lobbyists. Politicos sometimes mistake debates among lobbyists as wider community discussions - a convenient and time-saving shortcut when it comes to shaping policy.

When that happens, government becomes about closed elites taking advice from unrepresentative interest groups, the views of which are at best single-minded and at worst short-sighted.

Lobbyists' carefully constructed opinion polls and other devices are given too much credence. Like priests of old, they are sometimes assumed to be almost beyond question in areas of speciality, where they claim to have unique insight.

Lobby groups are an inevitable consequence of liberal democracy. If the many are to be ruled by the very few, those few must be confronted with the divergent views of their constituencies.

Lobby organisations may be necessary to politics but politicians should not get too cosy with them. Politicos must maintain a healthy if respectful distance, if objectivity is be both achieved and seen to be achieved.

For their part, MPs - and those paid to advise them - must ensure that they move beyond the professional political bubble, to hear the views of local, community-based groups.

They must avoid seeming shortcuts and expedient short-term answers, pondering long and hard how their present choices will impact on the future.

They must also learn to behave in more statesmen-like ways; thinking not just of the next election but of the next generation. They should be wary of those lobbyists who operate closest to the centres of power.