Working the people

Politicians' lives are all stress and toil, so they tell us. It might be beneficial if they cut their hours

So, blearily, government offices re-open, factories closed for an artificially long break think about turning on the lights again, and the fortnight of footling around we don't somehow count as a public holiday is over. The hardworking families so relentlessly invoked by politicians are going back to do business - if they can. But what, pray, about hardworking politicians?

The question is asked in best Whitehall mode, as spur to one time and motion study that doesn't exist. We know how civil servants and quango operators can do better. The management consultants crawl over them endlessly. What we don't know is how major ministers - leaders of men - organise themselves to organise us. The familiar story tells of constant toil, stress, exhaustion. But the reality seems somehow oddly various.

The US throws it into starkest relief. There's Jimmy Carter, haggard before his time, tied to the grind of the Oval office. It's an impossibly demanding job. Except that the next commander in chief was dear old Ronnie, off for a zizz before tea-time. George Bush senior stayed close to the action by bureaucratic training. Bush junior worked strict office hours, in early and home for an early supper.

In part, of course, it all depends who you are and how you function. What has George W been required to do in the last nine months of allegedly supreme authority? Very little, but play occasional Sir Echo to Hank Paulson's last Treasury announcement. He's sat, bemused and bewildered, on the sidelines of time, a mere shell of supposed authority. Yet no one can quite say that the world has gone to hell on a handcart because of that - any more than they can really say that Tony Blair's final situation-vacant months were the authors of present calamity.

Go 100 years back to Herbert Asquith. He was PM for eight fraught years. Britain ruled an empire then. And Asquith rolled out tranches of memorable legislation: the first government pensions; the Parliament Act of 1911 that finally curbed the Lords; the third Irish Home bill. He was a man at the apex of momentous events, struggling endlessly to salvage viable Westminster majorities. Yet what did he do when summer holiday time came? Pushed off for a month to a remote Scottish manse with strict instructions not to be disturbed.

And much the same applies to an even more revered leader, Winston Churchill. He had resilience and massive energy, of course: but we now know that, quite apart from the brandy into the early hours, he was also away on distant duty for weeks at a time - travelling to regular rounds of summitry that gave him extended breaks, drumming up support in America. He did not stay rooted to his desk just because there was a war on. Nor did he deny himself earthly pleasures.

Why do our masters now want to seem hardworking above all else, some from inclination (Mrs T and Mr B), some from a kind of glum necessity (lonely Mr Major)? You hear the authentic answer when Alastair Campbell talks 24-hour cable news and the digital pack. You see the basic answer as PMs go to open schools, welcome heroes home. None of this is the necessity of governance.

Time and motion, working by stopwatch, would probably be amazed by how little of any political week is actually devoted to starting and running things. Presentation, presentation - with attendant delegation. A strain, to be sure: but a grind only because of the supposedly necessary dross. A New Deal on jobs? Somebody must have been spinning somewhere over Christmas. Fewer NHS auxiliaries? Doctors aren't supposed to get sick, even in bleakest midwinter. But Asquith, you guess, would have let Sky TV go hang on such warm topics. As 2009 begins, ministers just go through the media motions. Hard, perhaps. But work, in any real sense? Remember the deserted wasteland of Whitehall last week, and ask the question yourself.