Modern democracy should not be treated as a ship of fools. The case against managerialism.

Change and a renewed betterment for ordinary people does not come through the management, good or bad, of accepted certainties but through those certainties being challenged and questioned.

I caught an advert for a podcast called ‘Disorder’ which is presented by a writer and journalist specialising in foreign affairs and a former British diplomat. I’ve not listened to any of their shows but the advert raised my hackles. It wasn’t the ‘Brexit is bad’ shtick we get from such people but the way in which the programme was positioned as a remedy to Plato’s ‘Ship of Fools’. Implicit in this positioning is, of course, an important 21st century political idea - that democracy has to be moderated by the great and good so it doesn’t result that the great and good don’t like. Naturally the presenters of the podcast consider themselves and their guests as the experts who should be guiding the government.

I make this observation because we are in a period where the dominant governing ideology is best called ‘managerialism’. We have a set of accepted certainties: that the state directs the economy, that the climate is changing to our detriment, that health and welfare can only be provided by the government, that individuals are more important than family and that the international order is good. And the task of the government is to manage policies founded on these certainties. Obviously ideas that sit outside the certainties cannot be allowed as Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Truss discovered in different ways.

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are two sides of the same managerialist coin. It would be wrong to say there are no policy differences between these two leaders but we can say with some confidence that both Sunak and Starmer will subsume their policy preferences under their principal ideology - managerialism. The result is that the policy debate becomes narrower and is dominated by organisations and individuals associated with the accepted certainties. If we look at the first clear ‘economic’ policy from Starmer’s Labour Party - strengthening the role of the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) - what we see is a proposal designed to weaken the ability of the public to influence policy and to strengthen the ability of the managerial experts to direct the government.

In contrast Sunak’s modest tweaks to ‘net zero’ policy have resulted in a huge kick-back from the managerial elite. Labour’s response is, of course, to defer to another ‘independent’ body, the Climate Change Committee, a group of appointed experts who oversee the accepted certainty that the climate is changing to our detriment. What is interesting here, of course, is that by exposing the government to criticism from a committee of experts appointed by statute Sunak exposes the government to legal challenge. It doesn’t matter, and we saw this with the Brexit process after the 2016 vote, that Sunak as the representative of the public leads the government because there is an appeal to a higher authority, the managerial expert, via the agency of the courts.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone close to local government over the past three decades that appointed managers are now more important in deciding policy direction than people elected by the public. From the statutory basis for Directors of Social Services through Gordon Brown’s inspection regime to Health and Wellbeing Boards having officers and members on an equal footing, what we’ve seen is the gradual sidelining of councillors. Today the only power remaining to elected councillors is, in effect, the power of veto, the ability to limit what happens. And most councillors have no roles other than the nebulous idea of ‘community leadership’ and the annual rubber-stamping of the annual budget.

What we’re seeing with the OBR, Climate Change Committee and a host of other advisory bodies and executive agencies is the same process that started in local councils back in the 1970s now being applied to the national government. Members of Parliament are, in large part, irrelevant to the process of debating and making policy and many now ape that community role given to councillors once they were safely removed from a role in making decisions. MPs spend thousands running constituency offices, chase casework and use the House of Commons as a platform for their re-election rather than as a place of debate. 

While MPs are rushing round their constituencies attending the opening of a crisp packet the issues that dominate parliamentary debate (and, often, wider political debate) are often second order issues. Labour MPs are more interested in playing gotcha over a slogan on the Prime Minister’s podium than they are in the proposals he set out from that podium. Similarly Conservative MPs focus on a joke letter left by a departing Labour economy minister in 2010 not the substance of economic policy. Meanwhile MPs across politics leap onto every headline - banning vapes, ultra-processed food, Saudi Arabians buying football teams, the historical antics of a shock jock - a thousand petty and unimportant issues all used to give the MP or minister a positive media profile.

There is no debate about climate change, economic policy, health and welfare, or families because the position on these matters is set. Response to climate change is determined by the deliberations of the Climate Change Committee urged on by media environmentalists and environmental charities. Economic policy - and increasingly government fiscal policy - is set by the Bank of England and the Office of Budget Responsibility again urged on by other organisations like the IMF, World Bank or OECD plus a legion of pundits and experts from academia, banking, management consulting and mainstream think tanks. Social policy doesn’t emerge from understanding the concerns of the public but from the interests of the NHS and the sensitivities of NGOs each eager to promote their role and all resolutely anti-family and anti-business.

The issue with this managerialism isn’t that experts aren’t useful, or even important, but that it results in an increase in what Geert Hofstede called ‘power distance’. Because the people who we elect are only tangentially involved in the development of policy choices, there is little or no contest between competing choices outside those choices constrained by accepted certainties. Such a position also leads to some of the problems David Skelton touches on in his book ‘The New Snobbery’ - ordinary people, the working classes in Skelton’s analysis, are not only unable to influence policy choices in their own interests but are also treated as unsuited or unable to contribute anything to the debate. Managerialism treats ordinary people as either a problem or as clients where commentary alternates between characterising them as ignorant, probably racist, gammons or else as hapless victims who require the state’s help.

Managerialism also allows politicians to defer to the appointed experts relying on their analysis rather than on their own judgement. So when the head of Ofsted argues for further extension of that body's powers and influence, the media reports it largely uncritically or even with enthusiasm. Politicians are unable to do much to resist such mission creep because to challenge it is to challenge the experts. It is easier and simpler - on the ‘nobody got sacked for buying IBM’ principle - for the minister to act as the agent of expert opinion by getting approval for their policy ideas than it is for the politician to craft an agenda that reflects the desires, needs and expectations of the population who elected that politician.

Much of what analysts - usually from that managerialist class - call populism is, in truth, the public electing people who represent their interests and therefore challenge the established managerial approach. We see this across some important policy areas but most notably on issues like immigration and crime. The established consensus among the managers is almost completely at odds with the dominant view of the voters so they respond by demonising anger at high levels of immigration or increasing crime and anti-social behaviour. Voters who support these positions are characterised as racists, as uncaring, and obviously as stupid. This is an important element of managerialist strategy because it means that, even when there is a clear and significant majority in support of tougher action on crime or illegal immigration, the proponents of those ideas become the baddies.

Change and a renewed betterment for ordinary people does not come through the management, good or bad, of accepted certainties but through those certainties being challenged and questioned. It is clear that such a challenge can only come from outside the government. We like to think that ministers will be tough in dealing with their brief but the reality, especially in a political party 13 years in government, is that there is almost no part of the programme of legislation that isn’t under the control of the dominant managerialist ideology. To deliver change a party has to come to power with a clear mandate for change - we saw this in 1945 with Attlee, in 1970 with Heath and in 1979 with Thatcher. 

Keir Starmer offers nothing that will rock the managerialist boat, his policies (such as they are) are either gimmicky and spiteful or else simply actioning the managerialist agenda. Moreover, by further hobbling scope to act through proposals like the one strengthening the OBR, the nascent Labour government seems likely to be the first elected on a specific pro-managerialist platform. We can expect more new advisory bodies, greater scope for legal intervention in government decision-making, and the further emasculation - misleadingly badged as devolution - of local government. The challenge for the Conservatives is to become the party that they want to be post-Brexit rather than the party they are right now.