Steve Richards: It is so easy to criticise politicians. But look what happens when amateurs take over

There is an art to politics. The vocation requires distinctive skills and experience. Throwing a non-politician on to the political stage is the equivalent of asking a person without musical skills to play in an orchestra. It never works.

There was an illuminating sequence at the end of last week. Within the space of a few hours MPs were pilloried for voting in favour of their expenses' allowances and Ray Lewis resigned as Boris Johnson's deputy in London. The elected politicians were slaughtered once more, their entire purpose called into question, and yet the pathetically short career of the non-elected Lewis showed how hard it can be for glamorous amateurs to breathe the political air and survive.

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The predictable onslaught on MPs came without any qualification or nuance. Some newspapers and parts of the BBC went bonkers with fury. Once more the pigs had their snouts in the trough. On this occasion the media was not leading public opinion but reflecting the rage. Callers to a phone in on BBC Five Live were almost universal in their condemnation. Even the usually calm and skilfully impartial presenter, Victoria Derbyshire, could not hide her fuming disapproval, suggesting that MPs should live in a hostel while they worked in London during the week, not a proposition that would go down well if applied to BBC staff who are generously accommodated when they leave their main work base.

At one point a caller to the programme summed up the collective rage by demanding the we get rid of the lot of them. A timid MP, being bashed around from all sides, dared to point out that such a move could lead to a dictatorship. In the current climate perhaps few would be bothered about such a prospect.

I am not defending the greedy fools who abuse the system. They are rightly slaughtered. In effect their careers are over forever. Some of the arrangements are also clumsily complacent, almost contrived to provoke outrage. But compared with most equivalent countries MPs are not particularly well paid or extravagantly resourced. The relatively unspectacular financial rewards are a reason why it is difficult to persuade the biggest talents to stand for parliament, an argument that extends further. There is a crisis in the quality of representation in British politics, a big understated theme. The poor quality manifests itself partly in the clumsy way in which the issue of pay and expenses is addressed, with a few Conservative MPs displaying an indiscriminate greed and some Labour MPs claiming with a naive inuslarity it is their duty to negotiate the best package available to them, as if the wider electorate should hail their skills as shop stewards on behalf of themselves.

Yet there is an overwhelming argument on their behalf. The MPs' link with their constituencies is what most voters praise about the current system. At the same time a common criticism made of MPs is their failure to hold the government to account more effectively. Such effective scrutiny can only be done if they spend their week days in London. The dual arrangement costs money and it is worth paying for.

The fate of romanticised non-politicians shows why. Ray Lewis got almost as much glowing attention as Boris Johnson when he was appointed a deputy. Johnson had persisted in securing the appointment with the active encouragement of his party's national leadership. It is easy to understand the appeal of such an appointment. Lewis is apparently an innovative community leader, in some ways personifying the Conservatives' approach to addressing issues associated with poverty and social justice. More potently he is black, a figure whose very presence was in itself a challenge to those who suspect, wrongly , that a casual racism lurks beneath the old Etonian Mayor of London.

But Lewis had never been a professional politician. This is what made him superficially appealing in an anti politics era and also doomed to failure. If he had been an experienced politician he would have followed his original instincts and stood back from the flames of the publicly accountable vocation thrust upon him as a deputy mayor. Elected politicians are scrutinised intensively and are held to account for what they do. The successful ones are alert to the many dangers, the most successful able to compile and implement programmes as they go. The less successful ones do not survive very long. Those who have no experiences in the art of politics do not survive at all.

Tony Blair appointed brilliant business leaders to his first government. Most of them were gone by the end of his first term. Gordon Brown made much of his appointments a year ago from outside mainstream politics. In different ways the non-political ministers have caused him more problems than their symbolic embrace was worth. Most of them will not be around in the government for much longer.

Arriving in Downing Street from the outside at the start of the year Brown's senior adviser, Stephen Carter, was struck by how Cabinet meetings were different to equivalent gatherings in the private sector. He was aware of observing a distinct breed – politicians calculating and acting in ways that are often far removed from those of non-politicians.

Being the subject of relentless media attention, opinion polls, by-elections and general elections is bound to focus minds, or at least condition them to behave differently. For a non-politician, such as Ray Lewis, moving into this world is the equivalent of speaking a new language or being asked to play a piano solo without having had a single lesson. Lewis tried to play the tunes and predictably was forced to leave the stage after the opening bars.

His fate should give David Cameron pause for thought beyond the fleeting headlines about Boris's early problems. The Conservatives' plans for the delivery of public services will give a lot of power and public money to the likes of Lewis and the wider voluntary sector. The party leadership is right to identify the more agile and innovative approach of these groups compared with the worst of the public sector, but it is not clear who will be accountable if these fashionable non-politicians abuse their new powers and generous financial resources, or are accused of doing so. Probably the elected politicians will get the blame. They always do. Part of the politicians' art is being prepared to take the blame. At least the best ones are prepared for critical scrutiny and know they will be held responsible for their actions.

At the end of Annie Hall Woody Allen tells the joke about the husband who complains to a doctor that his wife thinks she is a chicken. The doctor asks why he does not hand her in to the local asylum. The husband replies that he needs the eggs. Voters complain so much about the elected politicians that sometimes they would like to place them in an asylum or at least a cheap, dingy London hostel. But look at the fate of Ray Lewis and many others who cannot resist the call. We need the eggs.

s.richards@independent.co.uk

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