I had a fascinating conversation yesterday with my friend Sonia about government cock-ups. Anthony King and Ivor Crewe's new book asks whether the coalition is the most cock-up prone in history, and certainly the failure of the government whips to stir themselves to win the vote on Syria does suggest something of the kind.
Micheal Gove's repeated announcements and retractions suggest a difficulty thinking through new ideas.
I'm not sure this government is really any worse than any other, but - if it is - I have a theory about it. Three interlocking forces are involved.
1. Complexity. The sheer complexity of most systems of government, and especially in public services - a good deal more complex after three New Labour governments too - means that any change, however sensible, will mean unexpected and largely unpredictable side-effects. For many civil servants, struggling to make administration smoother, the only sensible way forward is to avoid most change altogether.
2. Frustration. Knowing this, some ministers - especially those who suspect that recalcitrant civil servants are dragging their feet - are, knowingly or unknowingly, keeping their favourite initiatives semi-secret for too long, for fear they will be scuppered,
3. Turnover. The staff turnover in the civil service is now so high, and so much of the institutional memory has been lost along with such a heavy proportion of staff - especially in the Department for Communities and the Department for Education - that these unintended consequences are even more difficult to predict and tackle.
These things are important. They leave ministers frustrated at the slow and unpredictable pace of change. They leave the public frustrated at the apparent inability of government to make things happen. And they mean looming problems unaddressed.
I remember being assured by senior civil servants under Blair how much they wanted big ideas. It wasn't true at all - they wanted small ideas. Now even the small ideas seem impossible.
And it may be that this is the inevitable stage that extreme centralisation reaches. The only solution is to devolve power more radically to those who can actually make things happen - on the frontline (see my book The Human Element).
This is the one lesson the coalition ought to have learned from the New Labour years. I understand why they haven't learned it - it would render them doubly powerless at the centre - but they haven't.
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I have to say I would want to pin part of the blame on increasing competition in the education sector. I don't know when exactly a good degree became essential for more than just a few elite professions, but I imagine that the explosion of inequality in the 1980's made it seem more and more important to do anything that would give you the edge in a competative job market. Anyway, it seems generally recognised that the way to get a first class degree, at least in the humanities, is to stand out and do something creative and unexpected. Surprise your tutor / market, even better defeat them with the power of your brilliance. After all they are only going to read the essay once, so it doesn't really matter if there are problems with it, the important thing is to persuade them that you are the star pupil who deserves a top grade.
Do this continuously for 3 years and then get rewarded for it (and indeed selected to go on to do the sort of jobs that will help you get into politics) and you can't help but start adopting the technique in everyday life. The key now seems to be to make every policy a suprise (or else it is denounced as lacking initiative) and to make sure that it is credited to you alone. Of course the fact that this is not a piece of academic writing, and the faults will come back to haunt you, make this a ridiculous way to carry on, but old habits die hard and you might just hope to be promoted out of your current position before it all goes wrong anyway.
Another likely cause of more cockups is that this government in particular no longer allows policy announcements to follow a reasonable assessment of their practicality.
Instead, new policies have been no more than fresh newsworthy slogans thought up by the PR specialists for short term political advantage.
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