Governing is Hard. Is our politics set up to deliver or fail?
Scandals, Broken Britain and a sense of despair in politics hovers over the coming election when this despair will be weaponised.
So my New Year plan for this column hasn’t got off to a flying start. We took a break last week on the Kent coast and my plans for a break from emails and social media went too well. I managed to avoid news and my emails for about 6 days. But switching things back on over the weekend reminded me how little had changed about the way this year is going to pan out.
I firmly believe that politics isn’t a ‘game’, even though sometimes it’s necessarily take part. I have always hated the childish behaviour colleagues and former colleagues were willing to take part in. And I fear this year it will only get worse.
Is Labour Ready for Government?
As we move closer to the possibility of a new Labour government many are rightly asking if they ready to take on this responsibility. This is an issue that is increasingly being considered seriously by Labour itself. . As Andrew Rawnsley in his column this week points out there are a number of the big names on the Labour front bench who were not even MPs in 2010 when Labour was last in power, including Health and Education and the Treasury! At least people like Yvette Cooper and David Lammy have Ministerial experience. And it does matter. Campaigning is very different to governing. The daily grind of meetings, new issues and challenges hitting you every day, sub committees; battles with backbenchers and stakeholder - all are very different to putting out a daily press release. I can see with the appointment of Sue Gray (a former top civil servant) is making serious inroads into the preparedness for government - there is an increasingly realistic approach to preparation from the opposition.
In my recent volunteering I have been helping one of the opposition Labour front bench teams with their policy making and what they intend to do in government. I had forgotten just how much there is to a learn for a new MP being thrust into a front bench role in opposition and just how little support is available. Imagine being taken from a brief on sport to one on the energy or vice versa. I have found I am having to start from scratch with briefings on all levels of basic infrastructure, financing and policy development. At least this is being done now and not the day after an election!
I am sure many who read this column are impatient for radical change - as I am. But what some would regard as rowing back on commitments, often looks to me an acknowledgment that a slogan or press release is very different from creating evidence based policy change and delivering it across the country. At one level - for those involved in political games it gets boring. They are off to fight the next battle with their political opponents. There are just not enough people involved at the heart of the political parties committed to governing well. Our political system of short termism and a winner takes all electoral system enhances this feeling. Reform of politcs is vital, but given the state of our country it is difficult to see how it would be a vote winner when compared to the Cost of Living Crisis. And so it gets buried as an unnecessary distraction. The argument is of course circular. Our broken country needs fixing, but it needs a system that delivers this for a long term vision. We need both. I see many involved in the 1997 victory now look back and wish we had been a little more confident in those first few years. I am hoping this Labour government will do things differently and be more radical than it seems to be going into the election, where you know I support the need for some caution. The electorate cannot be taken for granted and polling shows the fine balance Labour needs to strike - those still unsure about Labour and those who don’t think we will be radical enough. I don’t envy the leadership at this stage when iron discipline is required.
Post Office Scandal
When you realise how poor our politics can be at delivering you start to understand how something like Post Office Scandal can happen. I have been aware of the Horizon issue over the last few years. I am sure many readers will have known about the software problems and the unsafe convictions of Sub-Post office owners. It is very sad that it took a TV drama to get the level of public profile to get some justice for those most severely affected. The question is not just how the original scandal happened but how what looks like a cover up then played out foe the last few years.
These things happen when there is an assumption that the experts, authorities are right and colleagues rally around to protect themselves their reputations. I started to see this later in my time as an MP. I am naturally very trusting of people so when advised by managers, stakeholder and authorities I would take their briefings and trust their opinions. Equally I would listen to constituents and then try to balance their conflicting stories and understandings. As you can imagine they were often miles apart. Even then I would believe that those working for government and agneinceis like health , education, and the police for example were acting in the best interested of the public, even if mistakes did happen. I have often thought back to the 25,000 cases I took up in my 13 years in Parliament and wonder how differently I would approach them given the cynicism I now have for that assumption! I have written before about one piece of casework, which ended in the loss of young adult who left adult social care without anyone noticing. I campaigned for investigations and inquiries. I took at face value the reassurances I was given by the professionals. I am not sure I would do the same again. I assume MPs who were aware of the Post Office propbelms were reassured by their advisors and civil servants that the convictions were safe. It would have taken a committed MP or Minister to fight hard against their advisors. Once agin this is where politics can fail people in need of justice. We have seen all too often that people in authority can rally round to look after their own. We need to bring a healthy cynicism to the advice of experts and authorities. We need MPs with investigative skills. And we need more independent thought. And more time for scrutiny. Parliament has become part of the political games I hate. At its best it can and should be able to expose these scandals and often does.
This Podcast from Steve Richards also touches on a really important point. Reform of public services over the last 40 years has left most delivery at arms length - without Ministers having direct control. An army of apparatchiks sit between voters and politicians. Sitting in the Cabinet gives politicians very little actual power
As part of my teaching at Cranfield University I use the case study of the privatisation of the Probation Service by Chris Grayling to show how useless politics can be in scrutinising and holding Ministers to account. The first chapter of the Ian Dunt book helps explain this, if you have 20 minutes.
So how is the election lining up?
Last weeks story that polling showed the Tories could be heading to towards and 1997 level defeat you would have thought would have galvanised them to get their act together. Instead with the Rwanda Bill coming back to the Commons the Tories farce continued. As I have said many times this Bill is nothing to do with governing based on evidence or workable policy. It typifies the the political games that are played to generate wedge issues and government by 3 word policies. Stop the Boats requires a level of maturity the current prime minister and his team are incapable of showing. Where they have succeeded to stop immigration / boats from Albania for example, they took a sensible bilateral approach working with the Albanians. The best response for stoping the boats would be to do a similar deal with France and the EU. But the Tory right and press won’t allow Sensible policies. They have declared war on Sunak on this issue.
Will this just be an immigration election? Sadly it looks like at the heart of many battle ground issues, Immigration will be used as a weapon. It may be worth doing a whole series on the issue, as Reform UK will have it central to its campaign and this will have a disproportionate effect on media coverage.
There are very few ways of winning an election from government when things are spectacularly bad. But the Tories and their media friends will find a way of suggesting things have turned a corner and Labour will endanger this. This opening salvo from Sunak in the Sun highlights this. Tory tax cuts v tax rises under Labour! A bit of a cheek from the Tories who have created the highest tax burden in a generation!
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25432820/rishi-sunak-voters-tax-cuts-starmer/
And although Starmer is not Kinnock or Miliband the level of vitriol being pumped his way from both Right and Left are astonishing - ever wonder why nobody wants to go into politics - link to article about who goes into politics. Again I feel I need to write more about Starmer and his approach to winning and then governing as we get nearer the election. What does he stand for? What do his 5 Missions mean for the Britain he wants build. Even as a political observer I am not 100% sure, so a little more research is required!
Ends