Should Ed Miliband have joined the army?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/should-ed-miliband-have-joined-army-labour

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“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier,” said Dr Johnson. Alan Johnson (no relation, I assume) agrees. “Ed Miliband should have gone in the army for three years and enhanced his reputation”, he said this week. Miliband is a “geek”, he complained, who’d devoted his life to political wonkery. Three years in uniform would have done him the power of good.

Both Johnsons’ premises are correct. Samuel describes the male condition: there is no job that can compare with the camaraderie and challenge of soldiering; sitting here in this stuffy, inconsequential office writing about it feels a bit pathetic. Alan’s diagnosis is spot on, too: the fact that Miliband has never had a proper job undermines him, as it does Cameron and Clegg. All three identikit leaders exist in a Westminster bubble, and are incapable of addressing the concerns of anyone outside it.

Why, then, do I disagree that Miliband should have joined the army? Take a look at the current crop of MPs who served in the armed forces: Iain Duncan Smith, Bob Stewart, Ian Liddell-Grainger, Eric Joyce, Philip Hollobone, Patrick Mercer, Julian Lewis et al. Duncan Smith reached the top but didn’t last long; Joyce is not necessarily a great advert for the discipline of army life; nor is Mercer; the others favour the sort of robust rightwingery common in military circles. David Davis and Rory Stewart are more interesting Conservatives with military backgrounds, but each seems only to have managed a year or so in their regiments. Labour’s Dan Jarvis entered the Commons after a distinguished career in the Parachute Regiment, but has disappeared without trace. For better or worse, the qualities required in army life do not translate easily into the political world.

I have always regretted not joining the army. My father was a marine, and served in Malaya during the emergency. He rarely talked about it, and I assumed he had spent his time there strangling insurgents with piano wire, though he insists most of it was spent serving G&Ts in the officers’ mess. I wished I had done that – the strangling insurgents, of course, rather than the bar work.

In 2010 I decided to rectify my poor career choice and try out the officer training course in Westbury, Wiltshire, where candidates for Sandhurst are identified. I have rarely spent a more disastrous and humiliating day. My performance in the computerised tests to check your spatial sense was “catastrophic”, in the words of Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Pomroy, who was assessing me; I was hopeless at the obstacle course; and failed miserably in the initiative tests. My scheme to save a man trapped in the jungle and suffering from malaria ended with him dying. “Your plan is pants,” said Pomroy pithily. Needless to say, I did not pass. In fact, my score may have been a record low.

I would have been terrible in the army, but I like to think that doesn’t mean I’m a completely useless person. It could be that army skills are non-transferable. The army is about obeying orders and carrying out a ruthlessly logical plan. But messy, illogical life is rarely like that. And nor is politics. Soldiers tend to think in terms of black and white – that may explain why so many of the military men in the Commons are on the distant right. They like to identify enemies and eliminate them. Politics is an infinite series of shades of grey. The subtle art is to make everyone feel they are getting something from you. Peter Mandelson is – again for better or worse – the quintessential politician. Just try to imagine him in the army.

Miliband would not flourish in the armed forces. He would not easily command men; he would probably be bullied; and everyone would compare him with his better-performing brother. His fate might be even worse: his lack of dexterity with a bacon sandwich suggests he would be a dangerous liability in live-ammunition training.

So forget the army. But, yes, young Ed should have done something other than sit on Demos policy committees discussing predistribution. No one under 40 should be allowed to be an MP, and anyone who has come up through internal party structures should be barred from the cabinet. Alan Johnson surely embodies what Miliband should have done: been a postman!

It would have been a chance to meet people from varied backgrounds (otherwise known as voters); dodge rabid, slavering dogs (the perfect preparation for dealing later with the rightwing press); and confront the toxic issue of privatisation. If Miliband had spent a decade in the post office, he might now be electable.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a postman may not have quite the same ring to it, but when it comes to politics there is no better start in life.