Politics & Power Quote by Chris Patten

Patten’s dig lands because it sounds like a modest, reasonable standard and then quietly condemns an entire careerist ecosystem. “Backside on important seats” is deliberately undignified: politics reduced to upholstery, status, and proximity to power. It’s a comic image with a moral edge, puncturing the self-mythology of public life where ambition is routinely dressed up as service. The phrase “just about” is the trapdoor. He’s not naive about ambition; he’s drawing a boundary between ambition as a tool and ambition as the point.

The subtext is an insider’s impatience with a political class that confuses winning with governing. In Westminster-style systems especially, where advancement can look like a game of musical chairs, “important seats” aren’t just literal offices but safe constituencies, cabinet posts, board appointments, the revolving door. Patten implies that when politics becomes a ladder, the public becomes scenery.

Context matters: Patten is not a protest outsider, but a veteran Conservative who served at the center of British power and later as the last governor of Hong Kong and an EU commissioner. That gives the jab credibility and a hint of confession. He’s seen how institutions incentivize caution, message discipline, and career preservation, and he’s warning that a politics optimized for placement produces leaders allergic to risk, policy depth, and accountability.

Calling it “worthless” isn’t theatrical; it’s a blunt valuation. If the only output is personal elevation, the enterprise can’t justify the costs it imposes: compromise without purpose, polarization as strategy, public trust spent like petty cash.