A few days ago Graeme Orchard wrote a worthwhile CAPX piece on what he calls "Government by alphabet agency". Some people will have memories long enough to translate this as yet another attempt by government to pick winners via bureaucracy.
Nemesis has already fixed her inexorable eye on "Sir" Keir Starmer.
Government by alphabet agency spells disaster
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has well and truly hit the ground running less than a month since the general election. The King’s Speech has put in motion Labour’s flagship economic policies which are going to transform Britain, for better or for worse.
It would be hyperbolic to suggest there is going to be a paradigm shift in economic thinking, but the Mariana Mazzucato disciples are in charge, and the free marketeers, if there were any left in 10 and 11 Downing Street, are out.
It means we are going to see government led by five missions: economic growth, making Britain a clean energy superpower, taking back our streets, breaking down barriers to opportunity and building an NHS fit for the future.
All these missions are to be underpinned by a new partnership model, one between the state and business which believes the Government must drive and incentivise the private sector to achieve state-set goals and industrial strategies. Although some of Labour’s missions fall short of of pure Mazzucatoism, it is clear a new economic dogma is driving policy making.
It's a short piece but well worth reading as a reminder that this government already has failure baked into its ideology. Popcorn and a robust sense of humour seem to be the best response.
Although it is still early days, the Conservative Party in opposition will have to decide whether to tinker around the edges or apply a sledgehammer to Reeves’ alphabet agencies and economic thinking. Will the NWF, GBR, GBE, play a role in the Conservatives’ vision for the future? If they do, a new period of economic groupthink is upon us. If not, we must start to hold Labour and their missions to the fire, and judge them on whether they meet their own, admittedly nebulous, goals.
This will be a consequential government, and the challenge to change the political landscape once Reeves and Starmer have done their work could be much greater than we currently think.
Government by alphabet agency spells disaster
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has well and truly hit the ground running less than a month since the general election. The King’s Speech has put in motion Labour’s flagship economic policies which are going to transform Britain, for better or for worse.
It would be hyperbolic to suggest there is going to be a paradigm shift in economic thinking, but the Mariana Mazzucato disciples are in charge, and the free marketeers, if there were any left in 10 and 11 Downing Street, are out.
It means we are going to see government led by five missions: economic growth, making Britain a clean energy superpower, taking back our streets, breaking down barriers to opportunity and building an NHS fit for the future.
All these missions are to be underpinned by a new partnership model, one between the state and business which believes the Government must drive and incentivise the private sector to achieve state-set goals and industrial strategies. Although some of Labour’s missions fall short of of pure Mazzucatoism, it is clear a new economic dogma is driving policy making.
It's a short piece but well worth reading as a reminder that this government already has failure baked into its ideology. Popcorn and a robust sense of humour seem to be the best response.
Although it is still early days, the Conservative Party in opposition will have to decide whether to tinker around the edges or apply a sledgehammer to Reeves’ alphabet agencies and economic thinking. Will the NWF, GBR, GBE, play a role in the Conservatives’ vision for the future? If they do, a new period of economic groupthink is upon us. If not, we must start to hold Labour and their missions to the fire, and judge them on whether they meet their own, admittedly nebulous, goals.
This will be a consequential government, and the challenge to change the political landscape once Reeves and Starmer have done their work could be much greater than we currently think.
3 comments:
I've never been interested in popcorn. In my cinema-going days the thing was a packet of Smith's crisps. If there were two little blue bags of salt in the packet you had to be careful not to eat the second.
"taking back our streets": what, getting rid of all those noxious traffic barriers? I am surprised.
Maybe the government is setting up more bureaucracies to control the economy because they genuinely think that this is the way to secure growth. Or perhaps they know that the more people they have working for government bureaucracies, the more voters they have on their payroll with a vested interest in supporting Labour to keep the gravy-train rolling. Who knows?
What's pretty certain, though, is that when their ideas fail to deliver, it will be somebody else's fault. Some other malign influence (another pandemic, perhaps? An unforeseen threat from AI? A sudden upturn in global warming? The need to thwart extreme right-wing views?) will emerge to explain why we are worse off than in July 2024.
dearieme - I'm not a popcorn fan, but I've tried some salty popcorn our grandson prefers which was okay. I assume "taking back our streets" means even more noxious traffic barriers.
Sam - "What's pretty certain, though, is that when their ideas fail to deliver, it will be somebody else's fault."
That's the problem of course, the ideas have to fail so badly that somebody else must take the blame, instead of just quietly changing direction as soon as the icebergs are reported.
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