Georgia on my mind

You won't need me to tell you that the Labour party is in a bad way at the moment. Perhaps they've already written off the next election. Jackie Ashley of the Graun - who has stuck by Labour as loyally as she has stuck by Andrew Marr, despite having very good reasons not to - compares the party to the crew of a doomed vessel about to go over a huge waterfall. "Ministers no longer hope their boat will survive; now it's a question of who bobs up, amid the wreckage, after the white water."

So thoughts turn, as well they might, to the long-term: not just what will happen to the People's Party after the expected drubbing at the next election (assuming there is one, of course) but after the years of Opposition that lie ahead. It is in this light, I think, that we have to regard the row over the Hon. Georgia Gould, a 22 year old New Labour princess whose campaign for a "safe" south London seat (if such a thing still exists) is now sorting the Blairs from the Browns as in those saintly days of yore.

The Honourable Georgia is very young, of course. Yet her credentials to represent the good people of Erith and Thamesmead could only be doubted by the most churlish, or politically vindictive, old sod. The daughter of Tony Blair's long-standing polling guru Lord (Philip) Gould, she also has the strong backing of Tessa Jowell and has taken the trouble to lay out her wares in a lavishly-produced brochure. Which just goes to show how seriously she's taking it. According to Alastair Campbell, she is "a wonderful young woman of deep values and convictions, and whose dedication to Labour and progressive causes matches that of anyone I know". She went to Oxford (always a positive in my book). She has a holiday job with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. And she's blonde. What's not to like?

She might even be a political megastar, a Maggie in the making whose relationship to one of Tony Blair's closest political advisers had no bearing whatever on the speed of her ascent. That would seem to be Alastair Campbell's opinion: it was reported a few weeks ago that he rang up at least one local activist to claim ("ludicrously", thinks Kevin Maguire) that she is being spoken of as a future prime minister. She is undoubtedly fortunate in her connections, but the fact that most others have not had the opportunity she has does not mean that she doesn't deserve that opportunity; merely that, as Thomas Gray so wisely said all those years ago, full many a rose is born to blush unseen. Including, no doubt, many Labour roses.

And while she may be a blushing rose, Georgia's no shrinking violet. Nor does her membership of the New Labour aristocracy imply that she will be any kind of pushover. Almost six years ago, reported the Independent on Sunday, 16 year old Georgia told then education minister Margaret Hodge - to her face - that AS levels were "confusing".

Miss Gould and [her friend] Miss Birtles are in the lower sixth of the comprehensive Camden School for Girls in north London, and live with their parents near Fiona Millar and her partner, Tony Blair's spin doctor Alastair Campbell. Camden School has been popular with Labour image-makers, who have used it to highlight new education initiatives.

Miss Gould, who will be head girl next year, told the minister: "AS-levels create this stress and pressure, meaning you cannot enjoy your subject or read around it. It's all about exam technique and about preparing for these exams."

An obvious point, perhaps, even a conventional one. But there's little to deny its truth. Who knows, with this sort of coalface experience she may, in politics, be able to do something about it. It should certainly disabuse sceptics of the idea that Gould has no knowledge of life at the grassroots, at least in the educational system. Which is, as Mr Blair used to say before he got obsessed with faith and war, what it's all about.

Miss Gould continued: "I haven't read a book that's not directly related to the topics I'll be taking my exams on for ages. I had to give up judo because of my GCSEs and now there is just no time to do anything else but work. To me, the sixth form should be about enjoying my subjects, not just about exams."

Not having read broadly didn't prevent her getting into Oxford, it would seem. Any dons reading this, take note.

But does her relative lack of experience matter? The notion that Georgia Gould is "too young" to be an MP is a strange one. At 22, she is not too young to be a barrister, or a junior doctor - the latter a far more serious and responsible job than being a backbench MP, which these days brings with it little more real power than a seat on a local council, though perhaps with a more generous expenses allowance. Was Alexander the Great "too young", at eighteen, to have embarked upon the conquest of Persia? Was Henry VIII too young, at seventeen, to have become king? (Probably). Is Georgia too young to walk into a division lobby? Too young to ask a Parliamentary question that has been written for her by the whips? True, she lacks great experience of life outside the rarefied worlds of Oxford University and Tony Blair's Faith Foundation - but so do many others, who get into Parliament after a few years of spinning, character assassination and figure-adjustment as a "special adviser" or lobbyist. It is, perhaps, an advantage not to have wasted several years of your life thus, more out of contact with the world outside politics than a constituency MP can ever be.

Ah, you think, but we need politicians with "more experience of life" so that they can adequately represent their constituents. A New Statesman article raised this issue a couple of week ago. "What we really need" wrote Nick Greenslade "is people with experience outside the London media bubble." But that, of course, is not necessarily a question of age. There are many people twice Georgia's age who have little or no experience of life outside the London media bubble. Some of them are in the cabinet.

How can you empathise with your constituents’ job insecurity if you have never had a job to lose? Similarly, no elected representative can truly understand the significance of rising fuel and food prices and the importance of interest rates if he or she is still living at home and has never had a mortgage or the responsibility of running a household budget.

A hundred years ago, such arguments might have been - were - raised against giving the vote to women, few of whom had outside jobs or were responsible for paying the mortgage.

Georgia Gould may, for all we know, be a 21st century William Pitt the Younger - who only got into public life at such a strikingly young age, needless to say, because he, too, was very well-connected (his father being, erm, Pitt the Elder). It was normal in the 18th and early 19th centuries for ambitious young men to make their Parliamentary debut not long after their 21st birthday, a precocity made possible not merely by the eternal mechanics of nepotism and string-pulling but, more specifically, because of the rotten nature of the pre-Reform Act House of Commons, in which a substantial number of seats were at the disposal of wealthy landowners or political power-brokers. These days, as the Guardian's John Harris put it, "It is one of the more convenient results of Labour's hollowing-out that to become a parliamentary candidate in even a traditional stronghold, you need only face an ever-smaller selectorate - in Erith and Thamesmead, it numbers 279 people." But, however objectionable the old system undoubtedly was to democratic sensibilities, it produced Pitt, who saved us from Napoleon.

So perhaps it is time for a novice. Indeed, given the long period of time Labour is likely to spend out of office, so cordially are they are now hated for the disasters that they have wrought upon the country, it may be a good time for a novice. Georgie has as lot of growing up to do and a lot of experience of life and politics to gain: where better to do so than in the hard, unrewarding slog of opposition politics. If Labour get back in again, as presumably they will, then she will be both more experienced and no older than most of her colleagues: in poll position to lead part 2 of the New Labour revolution. You have been warned.