Singing the Deep State Blues. How conservatives can govern in a hostile environment.

Can a conservative (or for that matter free-market, small government liberal) government get a recalcitrant bureaucracy to implement its agenda even if the media centres entirely on elite objections?

“I wanted to cut taxes, reduce the administrative state, take back control as people talked about in the Brexit referendum. What I did face was a huge establishment backlash and a lot of it actually came from the state itself.”

LIz Truss making clear here that, she believes, her short-lived stint as prime minister was brought to a crashing end by a thing called “the deep state”. Responses to this claim vary from rolling around on the floor in hysterical laughter to simple incredulity. Some folk have assumed that, with Truss no longer a player in UK politics, she simply took the well-trodden road to what the Guardian would doubtless call the US Far-Right Circuit. After all those words were spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the epitome (in the febrile minds of the European centre-left at least) of the American far-right.

Although the term ‘deep state’ now has close associations with the confrontationist rhetoric of people around Donald Trump and especially David Bannon, as an idea it is a lot older, Indeed the tendency of bureaucratic elites to resist, even oppose, the implementation of policy they dislike is as old as government. In his magisterial ‘History of Government’, S.E. Finer repeatedly describes the role of what he usually calls courtiers clustered around different leaders, factions and ideologies. In most circumstances the unifying factor for these courtiers, after self-interest, was the preservation of the established order of things, the arrangements from which they benefit. And with the development of mixed-economy, big government since WW2, the interests of courtiers are aligned with sustaining the size of government and the extension of bureaucratic influence to a wider range of societal and economic activities.

It is this alignment that constitutes the “deep state”. In 1963 the New York Times wrote that the ‘deep state’ was:

"...a hybrid association of government elements and parts of top-level industry and finance that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process."

This echoes the concerns, first versed by Eisenhower but common parlance into the 1970s, that the USA was dominated by a ‘military-industrial complex’ outside the direct control of elected politicians.

It is a short, and believable, step from these views to concluding that the ‘deep state’ is absolutely able to use its power to undermine a prime minister to the point of forcing their resignation. Certainly the resistance from civil service leaders to any agenda not their own will be familiar to many politicians regardless of party.

The ‘deep state’ is real and nothing new. And even where the political leader doesn’t act as rashly as Liz Truss there is the sense of frustration articulated, it is alleged, by Tony Blair: 

“You cannot underestimate how much they believe it’s their job to actually run the country and to resist the changes put forward by people they dismiss as ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ politicians,”

Politicians should not claim, however, that this ‘deep state’ acts in a sort of coordinated, conspiratorial manner to prevent the implementation of conservative policies. Instead politicians should ask how to frame implementing those conservative policies as in the interests of the courtier class, or at least sufficient of that class for objections to be overruled without damaging the process of implementation. Liz Truss, by (and it doesn’t matter whether she is right or wrong) blaming the ‘deep state’ for her downfall, creates the view that short of revolution there is no way to implement reductions in regulation, lower taxes and a more open economy. I believe this to be wrong.

There are two distinct positionings for the idea of a ‘deep state’. One is that, as Truss and Bannon argue, opposition to conservative ideas is deeply and irredeemably embedded in the administration of government, meaning that public servants act in the manner of 17th century Spanish colonial administrations: obedezco pero no cumplo, “We obey but we do not comply”.

The second is that an essentially para-governmental network operates to determine what policies are acceptable and to ensure that only these policies develop into actions. This framing for the ‘deep state’ echoes a more left-wing idea of an embedded establishment operating via exclusive and private institutions like private schools, elite universities, gentlemen’s clubs, the freemasons and a less tangible network of family, friendship and collaboration. We see this defining of the ‘deep state’ in the work of writers like Matt Goodwin who talks of a metropolitan elite whose interests and values do not align with the interests and values of the wider population.

Of course these two framings are not contradictory since the people in government responsible for implementing (or not) government policy are part of the wider ‘liberal elite’ that Goodwin describes. What isn’t true is that this para-governmental network operates as some sort of conspiracy against the interests of the people. Like-minded people within a social milieu will share opinions and will adopt what psychologist Rob Henderson calls ‘luxury beliefs’ in order to sustain their exclusivity.  But, if we are to ask how a conservative government can operate effectively within such a hostile environment, then perhaps we should consider whether this wider opposition within media, academia and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can be ignored or better shaped? Can a conservative (or for that matter free-market, small government liberal) government get a recalcitrant bureaucracy to implement its agenda even if the media centres entirely on elite objection to those policies?

The civil service - in the widest sense of the world to include the leaderships of QUANGOs and large public institutions - are obliged to implement the policies government proposes and parliament approves regardless of their personal support or opposition to such policies. These civil servants are not the administrators of a Spanish colony 2,000 miles and six months' risky travel away, they are in an office over the road, on the end of a telephone, and wired up to receive emails, texts and whatsapps. Non-compliance isn’t an option.

P.J. O’Rourke in ‘Parliament of Whores’ observed that most people working in government are not petty ideologues but people with a genuine interest in the function of their part of government. We might call them experts (but also recall that experts can be wrong and there are other experts):

“I didn’t expect ordinary friendly men about my age. And they were car buffs. Almost everyone who works for the NHTSA (National Highways Traffic Safety Administration) owns a sports car or a motorcycle or a hot rod or a dragster…”

Most Fridays I play Dungeons & Dragons with a civil servant who works in policy and, like O’Rourke, the common characterisation of such folk simply doesn’t match what I see and hear. Most civil servants working in policy really are interested in getting good, evidence-based policy that makes matters in their area of interest and concern better. As O’Rourke discovered, however, people - regardless of ideology - are too often unwilling to believe experts:

“...the (Department of Transportation) had to commission a multimillion-dollar study to prove that there is no such thing as sudden acceleration even though he and everyone else at DOT knew sudden-acceleration incidents (SAIs) didn’t exist: SAIs would be reported to NHTSA. NHTSA would investigate them thoroughly. NHTSA would say they were caused by human error. And no-one believed NHTSA.”

For the UK the parallels with this sad truth lie in received (and erroneous) wisdom on the safety of SMART motorways, the condition of rivers, and the reasons for the financial instability of English local government. On a more strategic level we might add that pressures on the NHS budget are not caused by smoking, drinking or us getting fat but by the increase in chronic ill-health inherent in an ageing population. Everybody planning future budgeting and other strategies for health in England knows this is the reason but it is so much easier to talk about ‘bad behaviour’ than explain how expensive us getting old is for the NHS.

Using the wider idea of the ‘deep state’ (in essence what used to be called ‘The Establishment’) we should probably recognise some important features so as to respond to their criticisms of a conservative policy agenda. For all their elite education many people in the media, academia and NGOs are firmly attached to ideologies around health, education, society and economics that do not stand up when confronted with actual evidence. As a result such people and the organisations they lead prefer either a narrow understanding of evidence or else a focus on human interest, on the sob story. While civil servants are susceptible to such approaches (we all are) the civil service as an organisation is not.

Politicians seeking to make changes should set aside three things that people will present to undermine a policy: 1) it will poll badly; 2) look at these focus groups; and 3) watch this news clip. A moment’s appraisal will reveal that the source for these presentations will be groups or organisations with an emotional, financial or ideological commitment to the change not happening. The starting point for examining conservative policies has to be evidence not opinion however sophisticated its presentation. Opinion polls and focus groups are not evidence but the views of the ignorant presented through an ideological frame. Such things have their place in the development of good policy but we should always begin with “is what we are doing now working?” because that can be appraised with evidence of real people’s actual behaviour.

Insisting on evidence is only the first part of how to deal with push-back from public servants. We need also to ensure that elected policy-makers set the agenda for the department’s activities. It is easy as a politician to sit lazily back and allow the clever folks in the department to set out an agenda. But this means that, unless your policy is something the departmental leadership wants, everything we want to discuss is relegated to parts of the agenda when people start looking at watches, dreaming of that cool pint after work and sending you messages reminding you of your next meeting. Related to this is that the politician has a veto. As a former colleague once observed, if you can’t get them to do what you want, you can stop them doing what they want.

One of the failings of  conservatives faced with administrative resistance is to take the (alleged) Bannon view that the administrative state is the problem so therefore the civil service needs ‘deconstructing’. You cannot govern without allies and the first task should be to seek out and cherish those allies. Most people in public administration simply want to do their job well and these people fear activist colleagues as much as, maybe more, than do the politicians. These administrators may not be, in a political sense, conservative but they are allies since activists undermine their sense of comfort and security.

None of this eliminates the essentially hostile environment in which conservatives in government have to operate. The media, universities, charities, arts and culture are overwhelmingly opposed to conservative ideas and policies. But, in most contexts, you can find research and writing from within this anti-conservative environment that supports the policy you want to implement. There is plenty of evidence that, for example, marriage and families are the best environment for children and it doesn’t all come from right-wing think tanks. People who produce this evidence may have different ideas as to the actions required but the evidence remains supportive of a conservative agenda. Obviously, where there is less evidence supporting a conservative approach it makes sense to act with more caution. Take the well-trodden policy paths first.

There really is a ‘deep state’ and, if you are instinctively libertarian like I am, then the desire to cry “afuera” and tear it down is hard to resist. But maybe we should remember Franz Kafka’s observation that “every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.” The intransigence of bureaucracy, a feature of Kafka’s work, is such that it will behave as it does regardless of the manner in which we create that bureaucracy. Conservatives in government should struggle to avoid “going native” by simply becoming the vehicles for departmental policy preference. And conservative ministers need to arrive in their department with a plan for what they want to achieve or, at the very least, a plan to have a plan.

We are not going to destroy the ‘deep state’ because conservatives are not, by definition, revolutionaries. But we should recognise and plan for that ‘deep state’ (or ‘metropolitan elite’ or ‘blob’ or ‘administrative state’) protecting its own interests. It makes sense to allow the ‘deep state’ some victories while focusing on a few substantive and significant reforms to how we do government. So let them keep a Supreme Court but weaken its scope to set policy by limiting the role of judicial review. Keep the Bank of England’s independence but amend the terms under which that independence operates. Rather than tear down institutions and departments, start by working to change their focus and attention away from what they want and towards what you want. And remember that while a week might be a long time in politics, five years isn’t.