The young businessman was annoyed.

He was complaining about the Scottish Government, about the complexity of the public procurement process, of the time he had wasted bidding for work. "What planet do these people inhabit?" he asked.

His experience has left him disillusioned with politicians. Well, he's not alone. But he thought he had a solution to the current malaise: bar anyone from taking a seat in Westminster or Holyrood until they had reached the age of 40. First, they must gain some experience of the real world.

I wonder if Ed Miliband, aged 44, ever wishes he'd been given that advice when he was a young man starting out in politics. Yesterday morning the Labour leader told a television audience of housewives that his family of four spends about £70 or £80 a week on groceries. Really?

I don't think so, not for a middle-class family when the average family spends £100. His answer demonstrated the bear traps waiting for a politician with little experience of life outside the political bubble.

This, remember, is a man who has made the "cost-of-living crisis" a major plank in his campaign to become Prime Minister.

How could he understand the lives of ordinary people on average incomes when he has never been one of them?

This self- confessed maths geek went from Oxford to the London School of Economics. He had a brief stint as a television journalist before becoming a speech writer and researcher for Harriet Harman.

Gordon Brown poached him and the rest we know. Academe and Westminster are not the real world.

It made me think that my disillusioned young businessman had a point. Shouldn't a job outside politics for a few years be a prerequisite for anyone who aspires to be an MP or MSP? Shouldn't it be mandatory for someone with ambitions to the highest political offices in the land?

It would rule out our Prime Minister and many in the House of Commons and Holyrood. But would it re-engage the electorate? Would it make politics more accessible? Would it encourage greater participation?

I think it might.

There are those who will tell you that this is a Westminster problem, that Holyrood is different because it is physically closer to home and our MSPs are more accessible. But how many of us feel that they truly speak for us?

Judging by the 50.4 per cent turnout at the 2011 Holyrood election, it can't be more than half of the electorate.

Could this be in part because 21 of our MSPs have no experience of work outside politics of one sort or another? That is one-sixth of them.

A further 11 were lawyers and the same number were school teachers. Five were economists, four journalists and four social workers. There are three former economists in the chamber and two engineers.

Throw in the fact that one-quarter attended Glasgow University and a further one-fifth went to Edinburgh, with law, politics and economics being the most popular subjects. So the field narrows again. Holyrood boasts only two former Etonians but 17 per cent of MSPs are privately educated compared to four per cent of the population.

It's a majority for the middle class; not exactly a mirror image of the population at large. So, what if an age level of 40 was set? It would mean more politicians had the experience of finding then holding down a job, saving for somewhere to live, using public transport and budget shopping in the supermarket.

But would it be enough?

Should we draw politicians from people who have been successful in a former job or career? After all, they have to manage our economy, keep us safe in a dangerous world, encourage wealth creation and shape a fair and just society. Should we limit the candidate lists to high achievers, or will we distrust them for rising, especially if they become rich? Look at the flak David Cameron's cabinet of millionaires has attracted. No, for me experience of life and work outside politics would be sufficient.

Insisting on success would once again favour the middle classes when the problem with politics is the limited pool from which it draws its recruits.

If we are to solve the electorate's disconnection from politics, we need a broader range of candidates.

Most of all, we need some mechanism for replacing the candidates who were thrown up by the trades union movement, people like Alan Johnson, the former Labour Home Secretary. Would he make it into politics nowadays? I doubt it. But he's exactly the sort of person we are missing: an orphan who stacked shelves in Tesco before becoming a postman at 18 and rising up the Union of Communication Workers.

For all their faults, the unions offered a route from the factory floor to the floor of parliament. With this came the voice and experience of the people.

Surely it is essential that working men and women have their representatives in Holyrood and Westminster? That way we might have a chancellor who knows of the existence of Greggs and the price of a pasty.

Even Margaret Thatcher, for all her faults, did not lose touch with her father's grocer's shop or her inner housewife. She could speak convincingly of the challenges of balancing a family budget and use the analogy to inform the electorate of the need to tighten the nation's belt.

If it was all smoke and mirrors, it was clever smoke and mirrors. It kept the public engaged in the political process. Back then, in the 1980s, the Labour Party was five million strong. The Tories had 2.5 million members. Today the Conservative Party has shrunk to 250,000 and Labour to less than 200,000.

This malaise is happening at a time when people should be angry and should feel engaged in the debate.

Social mobility is stagnating. Wealth, which so recently seemed to be within the reach of anyone willing to work, is confined to an elite.

The shrinking of power into the hands of a few is a parallel, and as worrying for social cohesion.

I don't hold with judging a person by their background or the school they attended. I dislike, for example, the back-biting we hear about David Cameron being a toff. But even I wince when I read that 10 per cent of the 119 Coalition ministers at Westminster went to his old school.

That's not right. Nor is it defensible.

At the same gathering during which the young businessman suggested setting 40 as an age limit for parliament, I heard someone say that perhaps it was time to become involved.

I have heard other people express similar thoughts because of the independence referendum.

Perhaps that will be one of its least expected consequences: a greater participation in politics by people who have been campaigning for Yes or No, people who have had jobs and families, people who have until now lived in the ordinary world.