Somehow the logic doesn't fit. We're supposed to keep working longer, toiling for a pension coming ever later in ever smaller packages. But who tells us to keep gnarled noses close to the grindstone? Why, politicians who'll be here today and gone tomorrow. Take the debate around the great debacle of the day, a tale of woe that drowns out Kabul, BP and even the cuts. So Fabio Capello stays hired – not fired? Good idea, or bad? Capello is 64. By Brazil 2014 he'll be 68, and past even David Cameron's quitting limit. But age seems to play no part in this argument. It's winning and losing that matter.
Yet surely, you say, there ought to be some general parallels here. Football managers and government ministers both have high stress, high pressure jobs. They are judged most brutally by results. So they both need the wisdom of years to survive, an inner confidence built of a hundred crises that were also learning experiences.
Take Roy Hodgson, the manager of the year just moving from Fulham to Liverpool. He's 62. He's had 15 coaching jobs in 34 years. He's a master much hailed, because he's old and wise.
The Guardian's Kevin McCarra noted the other day that Brazil's doomed Dunga, at 46, was the youngest manager of the World Cup's last eight. A quick canter round the Premier League's finest makes exactly the same point. Sir Alex Ferguson, 69. Arsène Wenger, 61. Harry Redknapp, 63. Youthful success is Carlo Ancelotti at Chelsea, 51.
Work out a Premier League average age and it's 49. This world is full of late middle-aged men. The stress may be awful, but it's what keeps them going. Westminster, by contrast, is full of youthful hope and mid-life disappointment. With a little help from Ken Clarke, 70, and Vince Cable, 67, you can just about edge the cabinet's average age a year or two over 50. But the political Premier League posts have gone to Dave, 43, and Nick, 43, with George, 39, and old William, 49, standing in line. The future is Michael Gove, 42, Jeremy Hunt, 43, and Danny Alexander, 38. If they were in football management, all they would be offered would be West Brom or Wigan.
In sum, as a beaming Hodgson heads for Anfield and the crowning test of a career, political lives become even more nasty and brutish. Experience seems despised, and in chronically short supply. Labour fields a succession of Gordon Brown substitutes in their early 40s who all seem to have the same tailor. Why not call for Alistair Darling, 56, who still get rounds of applause at City dinners for doing his own thing? Why not add a small helping of heft to the team rather than another cruel round of early baths?
In the coalition corner, Sir Menzies Campbell, 69, could have given the Scottish Office something Michael Moore, 44, lacks: name and reputation recognition that keeps Scotland's future on southern agendas. Why leave performers like this on the bench when the supposed stars of tomorrow shine rather dimly as yet? There isn't even a point of principle at stake. Sir George Young, 68, can be asked to lead the House if no one younger comes to mind. Peep over Hague's shoulder at the Foreign Office and you may see a lanky minister of state standing behind: Baron Howell of Guildford, once of energy and transport, but back in business at 74. Whoever decreed 45 or so is the make-or-break age of a political career? Whoever assumes the last few decades of a political life should be spent doing nothing much beyond remembering – and writing unreadable memoirs?
Simple reality – not to say fairness – dictates something better. Habit cuts off too many of our masters before their prime. Watch the clouds of forgetfulness gather soon around Gordon Brown, 59. Unless, that is, Mohamed Al Fayed would like him to manage Fulham.
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