Most MPs get their political education at university — I got mine on a building site
Too many politicians seem to go from Oxford to Westminster without setting foot in the real world, writes Tory MP
BLUE-COLLAR Tory Stephen Crabb today declares he would be the best PM for hard-working Sun readers – because he used to work on a building site.
In an exclusive article, the proud Welshman reveals how toiling away as a brickie to put himself through university helped shape his political beliefs. And as he bids to succeed Old Etonian David Cameron in Number 10, he takes a dig at the silver-spoon backgrounds of many Tories in Westminster.
Most MPs get their political education in a school debating club or in a political society at university.
But I got mine on the building sites where I spent my summers working as casual labourer.
I can’t say I was always great at it – one time we got the foundations all wrong and nearly built a house back-to-front – but it was good, honest work for good, honest pay.
I worked on a bunch of different sites, but wherever I was the highlight of the day was always lunch in the cabin.
We’d sit together with our flasks of tea, sandwiches and our copies of The Sun and we’d set the world to rights.
Listening to the people around that table it was obvious how much politics mattered.
This was the early 90s, the economy wasn’t great, and people were working even harder than normal to make ends meet.
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Everyone on the site had bills to pay and mouths to feed.
And when the government made a decision, it wasn’t politicians in comfy London offices who felt the impact – it was the people out on the building site.
That’s one of the reasons I became an MP.
Too many politicians these days seem to go straight from Oxford to Westminster without setting foot in the real world.
Some don’t know what it’s like to get up at crack of dawn, pile into a van and drive halfway across the country to spend a day lugging bricks around in the rain.
They think politics is all about secret plots and schemes.
But I think it should be about working together to make a difference to working people’s lives.
Occasionally, when driving through places such as Newport and Brighton, I see some of the homes I helped to build.
Now I want to be Prime Minister so I can build something even more important– a country that works for all us.