Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men.

Amen to that. As somebody once said, any man who wants to enter politics should be barred from doing so!

One of my favourite readings, which I return to from time to time, is Alan Clark's first volume of his diaries. Clark was a patrician in the old sense of the world, a true snob who genuinely believed that his upper-class society, as opposed to the mere commonplace below his level, was the rightful ruling class of Britain. Eton, Sandhurst, the Guards, and an ancestral home at Saltwood Castle in Kent. An ardent supporter of Thatcher and totally hooked on getting Ministerial rank.

Sums him up, doesn't it? And yet... and yet... also an athlete and highly intelligent man who wrote a superb book on the fumblings and failings of the WW1 generals ("The Donkeys"), which earned him the suspicion of the high-ups in the MoD. (Clark aspired to be Minister of Defence). A vegetarian who loved wildlife and brought Thatcher's fury down on his head by fighting to abolish the fur trade against her express wishes. So, a rounded character and, love him or loathe him, a man who didn't give a damn about protocol and believed passionately in the things that drove him. A man who earned the disapproval of the high-ups at a private party given by Prince Charles because he attacked the conventional cold-war view of the West v. Russia scenario as outdated (he believed the future threats would come from the Middle East and terrorism...). We don't see his like very often, in any party.

And what is very clear from reading his book is that the Civil Servants do their very utmost to prevent Ministers and their ilk to do anything off their own bat, fill up the politicians' time with the infamous red boxes, cram their schedules so that every spare minute is accounted for. Real "Yes Minister" stuff!