Surely there must be some room at the top for a mere lad of 57?

Nick Clegg excited some predictable mockery when he recently referred to rich people living “literally in a different galaxy” when it came to paying tax.

Deputy Prime Minister and Lord President of the Council. No, honestly.

Sadly it is not so. They are very much on this planet, and many undoubtedly share the late Leona Helmsley’s view that “only the little people pay taxes”. And have, as Mr Clegg correctly pointed out, armies of lawyers and accountants dedicated to making this a reality.

Leona: sentenced to 16 years for tax evasion, served 18 months

But those at the top are different in other ways, too: notably in what they contribute in time as well as money. And time, I can say with confidence, is ultimately far more precious.

For example, the other day Tesco led the private sector in raising its normal pension age to 67. Yet its last boss Sir Terry Leahy conveniently retired, shortly before the business began to be described as “troubled”, at the ripe old age of 55.

Leahy: before the wheels fell off

The excuse, I keep being told, is that the job of Chief Executive, Prime Minister or even Headmaster is so impossibly demanding nowadays that no one can stick at it for more than a decade. This would at least make my age of 57 the ideal time to apply for a senior position if the same rules applied at the top as everywhere else.

But, strangely enough, they don’t. Although we are all living longer, and retirement dates for most of us keep receding, those in the most senior roles just go on getting younger. Aspiration is confined to a 20-year window between leaving university full of promise (for which read inexperienced and unemployable) to being considered pathetically over the hill.

We see the results all around us. Most of the present Cabinet, with the right honourable exception of Kenneth Clarke, look like children to me.

Clarke: I may not care much for his politics, but I applaud his dress sense

Yet Palmerston was appointed Prime Minister for the first time at 71, Gladstone for the last time at 82. Churchill was 65 when he succeeded Chamberlain in 1940, and 80 when he finally left Downing Street in 1955. We may debate the merits of all these men, and question whether they were on top form towards the end of their careers, but surely few would deny that the political class of 2012 look like pygmies beside them.

What a British Prime Minister should look like

Similarly, the list of possible successors to Rowan Williams has several men marked down by the bookies as “too old” because they are over 60.

There was a time when one could at least rely on bishops and judges bringing the wisdom of age to their vocations, with the added bonus of some easy laughs when they found themselves baffled by the more outlandish aspects of modern life.

Today it seems that only the British monarchy and the Papacy have room for someone seriously old to play the lead – even though it is so obviously good for the individual filling the role.

In the days when cardinals really were walled up in the Sistine Chapel until they elected a new Pope, there was a strong temptation to vote for the oldest and feeblest of their number to give themselves a break. Time and again this granted a spectacular new lease of life to some poor old chap who had been at death’s door until the Pope’s triple crown landed on his head.

Pope Leo XIII: crowned at 68, died at 93

I am under no Blair-like illusions that my best years are ahead of me, but I do feel that it is time for those of us born in the mid-1950s to launch a crusade to make 57 something fuller of promise than simply a number on the side of Heinz tins.

In short, I am still eager to get to the top of something: indeed anything. All suggestions will be most gratefully received. I promise to apply myself conscientiously for at least the next ten years, and not to spend a penny of my very reasonable salary on employing sharp tax accountants.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The most dangerous age is now 43

How do you tell when you are getting past it? For my parents the key marker was policemen, whose increasing youthfulness caused gloomy comment every time they fired up the Ford Consul for a weekend run to Druridge Bay.

With me it is business leaders and politicians. Never mind new appointments; these days people far younger than I am are retiring as chief executives after hugely rewarding stints at the top.

As for party leaders, when Gladstone made his great comeback in the Midlothian campaign of 1879-80 he was 70 and had been in Parliament since 1832. The current head of Gladstone’s party is 43 (though he looks younger) and has been an MP for five minutes, sorry, years.

While Gladstone barnstormed to victory through a series of lengthy open-air speeches reaching maybe 90,000 people, Mr Clegg has attained pole position in this election with just two 90-minute TV appearances.

If the Young Pretender really does have the keys to Number 10 at his disposal, how will he play his hand? I think we can guess the quality of his negotiating skills from the fact that Mr Clegg is an atheist and his wife a Catholic; their three children are being raised as Catholics.

Similarly, Mrs Clegg (as she apparently prefers not to call herself) is Spanish, while Mr Clegg is at least partially British (his own website draws attention to his Dutch mother and half-Russian father); their sons are called Antonio, Alberto and Miguel.

If his evident assertiveness with his very own European partner is anything to go by, we may surely conclude that “yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir” is one of the better polished phrases in the four EU languages in which Mr Clegg prides himself in being fluent.

Yet being an accommodating “New Man” seems to be considered a sure-fire turn-on for the voters. David Cameron, also 43 and from an eerily similar privileged background, works hard to project himself as young, hip and cool, getting down with the kids and surrounding himself with babes, whether for kissing in their prams or as Tory candidates in winnable seats.

Where is the voice of experience when you need it? Oh yes, there is Gordon Brown, but then his experience was creating the mess we are all in now, which is hardly the strongest argument for giving him our support.

It seems ironic that, as the average lifespan stretches out towards 100, we apparently believe that people will do their best work before they are even halfway there. Tony Blair entered Downing Street at 43: a truly alarming precedent.

Will we ever again have an octogenarian Prime Minister like Gladstone, Palmerston or Churchill? It is certainly not the way to bet, particularly after the going-over suffered by Mr Clegg’s geriatric predecessor Sir Menzies Campbell, forcibly retired at 66. Would that be why the long-serving Sir Alan Beith (67) seems to have become more or less invisible in this campaign?

Whether you are appointing a PR man, financial adviser, chief executive or Prime Minister, choosing someone who cannot remember the last time that things went really horribly wrong greatly increases the chances of it happening again. This time, someone with experience of getting things surprisingly right should be in pole position. What a shame Kenneth Clarke is both 69 and an unabashed euro fanatic.

I must conclude with a sincere apology to Mr Clegg for my egregious error last week in suggesting that he attended the same school as that unbearable toff George Osborne. I knew that Mr Clegg went to the academically distinguished and socially exclusive Westminster School. My lazy error was to believe that Mr Osborne did, too, when he actually went to St Paul’s. Which is no doubt why his nickname in Oxford’s deeply unlovely Bullingdon Club was “Oik”.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.