People like us

Andy Ayim has a fine Centre Write piece on the way we do not reward merit. As Ayim succinctly puts it, we pattern-match for resemblance instead.


Britain is an HR mirrortocracy

Growing up as a kid in Tottenham, I felt limitless, as though I could be anybody and everybody. I spent my formative years, as any kid does, feeding my curiosity, playing and learning in and out of the classroom. My local community centre was where I made most of my friends back then, playing or talking about football. I wanted to stand out, show off what I was good at and make my parents proud.

Along the way that changed. Over the years, through interactions with my parents, teachers, media and the local community, I slowly shrank, desperately wanting to fit in. I was becoming a restricted version of myself to get good grades at school and, later, to do well in the job I was hired for. We all have a version of that story: the trade-off between belonging and fulfilling our potential.

I have come to believe that Britain has its own version, too. Are we, as a nation, playing it small? Or being all that we can be?

We tell ourselves we are a meritocracy: a flattering myth that talent rises, that merit is rewarded, that where you start off in life does not limit where you end up. But look closely at who actually gets to lead in business and public life. We do not reward merit so much as we pattern-match for resemblance. We promote the people who look, sound and think like the people already in the room. We take shortcuts to look for people we went to school with, people we previously worked with: people like us.


The whole piece is well worth reading as we wonder what the difference will be between Keir Starmer and Andrew Burnham as UK Prime Minister.

Through the course of my job, I have asked thousands of managers the same question. Who was your favourite teacher in school? What did they do? How did they make you feel? What impact did they have on you? Almost no one replies it was the teacher’s degree or technical skills. It is always the soft skills that surface. “She believed in me.” “He inspired me. “They supported me,” and so on.

Speech Control: Britain's China Temptation

A very interesting Yinfi video from a couple of weeks ago. From the video description -

Surveillance is never the disease. It’s the symptom. 

The real illness is older and quieter: the moment a society stops believing it can answer bad speech with better speech, and starts handing that job to the state. China gave in to that temptation decades ago. Britain is only beginning to feel the pull.

We don’t really need you

Former chancellor Merkel told Rheinmetall “We don’t really need you”, CEO reveals

Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger has publicly criticised former chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), claiming she was highly dismissive of the defence company and that Germany would rely on the United States in times of crisis.

Speaking at the Welt Security Summit on July 2, Papperger recounted that Merkel had told the arms sector: “We don’t really need you, if there is a problem we call the Americans.” The dependence on Washington, he suggested, had been a deliberate choice.

Donald Trump already knows it was a deliberate choice of course, hence his attitude and wider US attitudes towards Europe. Fully deserved attitudes too.

Trend-spotters have already spotted this one

Ex Treasury adviser warns HMRC to use AI to create surveillance state

A former senior Treasury adviser to Gordon Brown has warned that HMRC is on the cusp of using artificial intelligence to track people’s and businesses income and expenditure without them knowing.

Dr Chris Wales, who was a member of Mr Brown’s Council of Economic Advisers for more than six years, has sounded the alarm while launching a chilling book on the conduct of the Spanish tax authority, Agencia Tributaria.

He is set to join former Labour Treasury minister Baroness Dawn Primarolo at an event next week flagging up how the Spanish model of dealing with tax evasion is about to arrive in the UK suggesting that the door is opening for a “surveillance state.”

In a preview of the future, Dr Wales has claimed that confidentiality in personal life – not just finances – “will simply go out of the window” and asks whether there are adequate safeguards in the UK to prevent HMRC from emulating its Spanish counterpart.

How likely is it that a Burnham government will debate this openly before implementation is too advanced to call a halt?

On a scale of 0 to 0

Burnham’s shameful role in the David Kelly affair

Thanks to dearieme for passing this on - Kathy Gyngell has a TCW piece on Burnham's role in the David Kelly affair.


Burnham’s shameful role in the David Kelly affair

AS WE enter July, my thoughts have been straying back to the shadows of corrupt and cover-up government, evident well before covid and lockdown, and to an anniversary – the unresolved death of Dr David Kelly, the highly respected British weapons expert and former UN inspector whose body was found in an Oxfordshire wood 23 years ago.

It's not a long piece and well worth reading the whole thing.

Because of my work

Labour 'should win next election' with Burnham because of my work - PM

Labour “should go on to win the next election” under Andy Burnham, Sir Keir Starmer has said, because of the work he has done in power.

In his first sit down interview since he announced he will quit as Prime Minister, Sir Keir also insisted he held no “personal animosity” for Mr Burnham, who is all but guaranteed to succeed him.

Speaking to the BBC, the Prime Minister was asked what he thought his achievements were in power and as leader of the Labour Party.

He pointed to efforts to tackle antisemitism in the party in opposition, the 2024 general election victory and said his Government had “stabilised the economy” over the last two years.


Starmer is a strange man, one of the strangest we've seen in recent years and it's a tough field for anyone to stand out as strange. If he has “stabilised the economy”, then even a few Labour voters might wonder what an unstable economy looks like.

Naturally enough Starmer is still pushing the line that Burnham is a serious party choice for Labour and not a stand-in for someone willing to take the party all the way to the next general election. Burnham won't see himself as a stand-in and maybe he's right if nobody plausible wants the job.

Apart from the economy he claims to have "stabilised", Starmer hasn't even stabilised his party politically - they don't know what they are doing. Dud ideologies, dud MPs, habitual mendacity, furtive malice and pervasive stupidity don't help, but Starmer didn't do much about that, still seems to see it as part of the job. Perhaps many voters do too.

Why every Whitehall reform ends in failure

Tim Knox and Nada Kakabadse have a useful CAPX piece on a perennial UK problem, the failure to reform Whitehall. Well worth reading if only as a reminder that politicians we vote for have no great interest in tackling the problem - there are too few rewards for doing so.


Why every Whitehall reform ends in failure

• 17 attempts to reform government since 1968. Not one has made a lasting change
• Does Civil Service reform make things better or worse? No one ever checks
• The system rewards announcing change. Not delivering it

Talk about reforming the machinery of government often sounds like a wine tasting. One expert raises the glass, considers the latest initiative and says: ‘An interesting effort, but not enough depth.’ Another detects ‘promising notes of delivery, rather spoiled by departmental silos’. A third finds ‘hints of innovation and accountability, but with a disappointingly familiar finish’.

Everyone knows the vocabulary. Everyone has heard the speeches. Whitehall must be more agile, more mission-focused, more digital, more accountable, more joined-up, more innovative, more outward-looking. The words change a little with each administration, but the ritual is repetitive. A new government arrives, a new review is launched, a new unit is created, a new organogram is drawn, a new acronym is born. Then the system absorbs the initiative, waits for ministerial attention to move elsewhere, and carries on much as before.

The problem is not that Britain lacks reviews. It is that the system is exquisitely designed to produce them, praise them, file them and forget them: since the Fulton Report of 1968, there have been 17 major attempts to reform government, and not one has made a lasting change. The failure cannot credibly be blamed on one party, one ideology, one prime minister or one awkward generation of officials. It is too consistent for that.