The rot sets in...

An extract from Grass Roots, a novel by Labour MP Joe Ashton, published in 1977:

'And who speaks for you at Westminster? Do you know how many of the MPs ever helped to build a ship, to make a motor car, to put up a school, to weave cloth, to cut wood, to forge steel, to generate electricity, to dig coal, or run a railway or hospital? I'll tell you. About ten per cent of them. Do you know that many of them have never even sat on a local council? Do you know that of all the MPs in Parliament the number under the age of forty-five who have ever done manual work can be counted on the fingers of one hand?

'And the reason is that politics has become a career. It's become a step-ladder. A pat of progress from the debating chamber of the students' union at Oxford to the dispatch box and the front bench in the House of Commons. And it has meant that MPs have become tame, placid, docile sheep. Frightened to speak up. Never having the guts to stand up and be counted because if they do then it will affect their career prospects.'