Training 'like-minded' politicians creates creatures of consensus not change

We need people who are prepared to break things, upset apple carts and offend the great and the good who inhabit the taller towers of media, academia and public administration

When we are seeking reasons for the parlous state of Britain’s state institutions, one suggestion that frequently arises is that the calibre of political and administrative leadership has deteriorated to the point that it is damaging the effectiveness of the state. The argument here goes that the system simply fails to meet the requirements of a modern polity - here’s the programme director of Civic Futures pitching their programme:

“The reality is that for too long, too many of our public institutions have been prioritising the wrong things and focusing on the wrong problems. Many of them simply no longer work as they should. They are short-termist, or too risk-averse, or overly bureaucratic.

But improving the quality of people entering into public life is one thing we can do something about. This isn’t just about individuals but about what, in earlier eras, might have been called political formation: the opportunity to chew over difficult ideas away from the interminable rush of news headlines and email notifications.”

The argument goes that, if only we get the right chaps in charge, regardless of grubby party politics, then everything will be fine. This is a very old fashioned Tory viewpoint so isn’t entirely wrong - I wrote about it in a short blog post trying to explain why David Cameron was the most ‘High Tory’ leader of the Conservative since Harold Macmillan:

“The second concept is the idea of administration. Some people see the purpose of securing political power as the way to effect change, to direct the forces of government so as to improve mankind. In Cameron’s conservatism this is not the case; the purpose of power is administration – the running of good government.

A Tory friend at university once described this as “soft loo paper conservatism” – the object of government is to deliver contentment, comfort, security and maybe happiness to the citizen. There is no place in conservatism for the idea that mankind can – or should – be bettered or that government, through planned action, can improve society. If society is to get better, it will do so because people act nobly not because government willed it so.

As importantly, Cameron’s “conservatism as effective administration” requires attachment to and confidence in institutions – the National Health Service, the Civil Service, Royal Colleges, Universities. Government should concern itself with ensuring these institutions are well administered rather than with the outcomes of the institutions work. Put the right leaderships in place and trust in their judgement is what government must do – and then act to implement and enforce the plans those leaders create.”

In this old Tory world, of course, there weren’t programmes run by well-meaning charities aimed at finding the next generation of leaders. Such things were unnecessary because schools like Eton, Westminster, Harrow and Winchester and universities like Oxford and Cambridge would do the job of selecting, sifting and developing those leaders.

The problem is that ideas of equity ate away at the belief that future leaders could be found on Eton’s playing fields and that a test of liberal education was the core requirement for those who would lead the civil and armed services. And, since the 1960s a generation of political leaders, from Heath, Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher and Major, emerged from grammar schools where the only entry criterion was being bright. The old sense that political leadership was down to aristocratic purpose, was replaced by the idea that politicians could be trained in the skills and attitudes essential to administering the institutions of state in the 21st century.

Organisations like Civic Futures are right in their analysis that the poor calibre of political and administrative leadership is one of the reasons for the inability of governments to resolve ‘wicked issues’ such as immigration, health care provision and economic growth. Modern politicians increasingly behave as glorified case workers rather than providing any sort of actual leadership. Worse, junior ministerial roles (because they are largely drawn from the ranks of those glorified case workers) are filled with people who have no plan, provide no direction and act more as a conduit for civil servants to protect the current status quo rather than as change leaders. The core skills for ministers are not dropping the ball and not being there when the cock up happens.

What Civic Futures offer is to revisit the Common Purpose idea of drawing together emerging leaders from the private, public and voluntary sectors and delivering a programme of development around critical issues facing the nation with the intention of addressing these ‘wicked issues’ under Chatham House Rules:

“Fellows will gain fresh insight into how our system works – and doesn’t. We will answer questions like:

How do we build more housing and infrastructure?

Why can’t we control immigration?

How can we significantly increase economic growth?

Why is liberalism such a contested idea in the modern world?

What are the major threats to British security and influence abroad?

This is a chance to gain the skills and knowledge needed to prepare you for public life, build a network of like-minded individuals, and make clear decisions about your future career.”

The most important purpose of the programme isn’t gaining skills or knowledge. Nor is it making career decisions. The purpose is to create ‘a network of like-minded individuals’. Bear in mind that Civic Futures repeatedly stress that they are outside party politics (“we’re open to people…with an affiliation to any political party or none”) but that they want “like-minded” people. This is simply a rebadging of the High Tory idea of getting the right chaps in charge and doesn’t represent any challenge to the prevailing orthodoxies of public administration, finance, taxation and political structures.

Public administration, pretty much everywhere, faces a crisis and there are two radically different medicines prescribed to cure the ailing institutions of state: better leadership of those institutions or the comprehensive restructuring of government. The inherent conservatism of the Civic Futures approach leans towards a gradualist approach to change, it is the agenda of what have been dubbed ‘the sensibles’, that good people sat round conference tables receiving expert input will resolve the problems with, say, immigration or housing. But the problem is that, once these like-minded people step out from the protection of Chatham House Rules and into the political and media shooting gallery, their sensible solutions last about thirty seconds before being destroyed by the reality of politics. This is why the idea of consensus - the central principle driving Civic Futures, Common Purpose and the training of public servants - is for the birds. You can’t fix Britain’s planning system or reduce levels of immigration let alone get some economic growth going, without breaking the consensus because the consensus is the problem.

A couple of years ago I argued that we have too many MPs and that they serve us poorly. I would extend this to our wider public administration: we have too many regulators, executive agencies, arms-length bodies and government departments. And, within these institutions and functions there are too many people dedicated to sustaining unnecessary (and often expensive) activities on the basis of a consensus about equalities, communications, climate change or law. Moreover most institutions have conflicting priorities (I should observe that having more than one priority is not only illogical but also an inherent source of these conflicts). The National Health Service should not have any priority that isn’t “improving health outcomes for the UK population” but despite this it has priorities for equalities, staff, and net zero that have the same value as what you all thought was the purpose of the NHS. It doesn’t matter how many networking meetings your leaders go to and how many like-minded people there are in those networks, if there isn’t a clear purpose and direction for the institution then that institution will fail.

This isn’t to completely dismiss the idea of developing future leaders but rather to question the presumption that political leadership is a professional skill, and to suggest that the most effective politicians aren’t those who spend a lifetime of public service finishing up with their backside warming the red benches of the House of Lords. Our institutions, pretty much all of them, need reform. Not tinkering dressed up as some sort of ‘Agenda for Change’ but wholesale changes. And this doesn’t need like-minded people from a cosy network but people who are prepared to break things, upset apple carts and offend the great and the good who inhabit the taller towers of media, academia and public administration.