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.

An engineered assumption

Andy Burnham reveals tax plan to save pubs and high streets

Andy Burnham has signalled that he will introduce a so-called “Amazon tax” with a massive reform of business rates in a bid to save Britain’s high streets.


The engineered assumption behind Burnham’s bit of theatre is a familiar one - assume government is akin to a household balancing its budget against a limited income. It's a perspective which can be useful, but the background assumption in Burnham's version is that disaster will ensue if that limited income is ever decreased. 

The obvious catch is ignoring the absurdly wasteful, spendthrift nature of modern government, the swamp of waste, fraud, incompetence, malinvestment, patronage networks, worthless quangos and NGOs, costly political favours, disastrously expensive energy policies, the wasteful expansion of university courses and so on.

Obvious of course, but engineered assumptions such as this do limit political narratives and discussions. Too many voters seem to vote within those assumptions, too many seem to believe they believe them.

Between a rock and a hard head

 

Spread to the Edge

The other day, Mrs H and I were in a coffee shop and for some reason I found myself scrutinising a chap who was carefully spreading jam on a slice of toast.

The spreading operation attracted my attention because the chap was spreading his jam with such precision, holding the toast in one hand while taking great care to spread the jam right to the edge all the way round. I don’t know what flavour the jam was, but it was red.

I don’t eat toast and jam, I’m more of a marmalade or Marmite chap, but all I do is shove some onto buttered toast, smear it around a bit then scoff it. If the butter is too cold to spread properly then a few lumps of it will do.

I’d have consumed two slices before the careful spreader had taken a bite.

Yet to arrive in Ed's world

Climate researcher Judith Curry says the era of ‘climate stupidity’ is done and declares victory

As media outlets shut down their climate desks, corporations retreat from climate targets, and polls of voters show they rate climate change lowest on their priorities, critics of the “climate crisis” narrative are saying it may be time to move on.

American climatologist Dr. Judith Curry on Tuesday announced that she would no longer maintain her influential blog, “Climate Etc.”

“It’s time to declare victory against climate stupidity and move on,” said in her final post. The reelection of President Donald Trump came with an overall shift in the political landscape regarding climate and energy issues. Since then, major media outlets shut down their climate desks, corporations are easing back on emission-reduction targets, and polls consistently show the public rates climate change low on their list of priorities.

Some figures like Curry who disputed the “climate crisis” narrative — often in the face of vitriol from those who support it — are now saying their efforts paid off and an era of climate hysteria is coming to an end.


Andrew Burnham doesn't come across as the kind of chancer who would notice the failure of Net Zero, shift his position and shift Ed Miliband at the same time, but who knows?

Ed Miliband's climate fanaticism may be crazy and his craziness may have to end eventually, but politically it has served him well. 

Of course he is just a little crazy, poor sweet, but it is a very profitable kind of craziness, so one need not drench oneself in tears about it. One of the secrets of a successful life is to know how to be a little profitably crazy.’

Josephine Tey - To Love and Be Wise (1950)

Using our own innate nature as humans against our interests

As some may have noticed from the left hand side bar, AI data centres seem to have been scanning one of my 2021 posts caller Snugglers II. 

After reading the post and comments again, I've used Sam Vega's comment about the "bandwagon effect" for this post as it seems to be one of those permanently relevant observations about social and political matters. 

There are some interesting insights to be had in reading around the "bandwagon effect" and "social compliance" in Social Psychology. I get the sense that we are being gently manipulated by people who have studied this stuff in detail; in effect, using our own innate nature as humans against our interests. It makes me more inclined to value those oddballs who do not conform. That weird old boy who endlessly cycles around our nearest town with a big trailer full of dogs...that woman who carries old newspapers clutched to her bosom...the kid who talks to himself in public in a loud monotone. These people might become more important, and might even become valuable to us as the ratchet tightens.

The bandwagon effect is a cognitive bias characterized by the tendency of individuals to adopt particular opinions, behaviors, or attitudes primarily because they observe others, especially a perceived majority, doing the same, often irrespective of the intrinsic merits of the choice.

Monumental but meaningless

Ai Weiwei’s art is monumental but meaningless

Ai Weiwei, I suspect, would like me to feel guilt, and as I walk out of his new exhibition, guilt is what I feel. Not, though, over my complicity in Britain’s imperial deeds, or our more recent adventures abroad, both of which Ai invokes while studying the murky legacies of the West.

Rather, I’m guilty about the prospect of giving two stars to Button Up! Ai himself can take it: now 68 years old, he’s perhaps the world’s best-known living artist, a Western poster boy for resisting the Chinese regime – he lives, at least some of the time, in Britain – and his name alone should generate healthy ticket sales.

Button Up!, too, mounted in a single vast space at Manchester’s Aviva Studios, and described as Ai’s “largest site-specific exhibition to date”, is neatly presented – even, occasionally, stark. No blame accrues to the proverbial village, from curatorial staff to specialist artisans, who’ve brought it all into being. The problem, from top to bottom, is Ai Weiwei.


It may be meaningless and it seems to be woke, but it does display the art of governing supposedly educated minds.


It is not, then, the facts in themselves that strike the popular imagination, but the way in which they take place and are brought under notice. It is necessary that by their condensation, if I may thus express myself, they should produce a startling image which fills and besets the mind. To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)