Levers of Power

I don't know Latin. At school, I (or was it my parents? I don't remember) chose Spanish and German as my two foreign languages to study, abandoning Latin (nobody speaks that) and French (only weird people speak that). It was a good choice in some respects: Spanish is easy, particularly to pronounce, German the way of the future. In the sixth form I added Russian, on the advice of a science teacher following my choice of Maths, Physics and Chemistry at A Level. "If you want to be a future scientist, you need to be able to speak Russian". I didn't really want to be a scientist, I just wanted to leave school as soon as possible; maybe even formal education, although later life choices would seem to contradict that. In any case, that (fellow travelling?) teacher obviously didn't accurately predict the declining cultural and scientific influence of the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia. At the time, however, it felt like the Russians and the Germans would come to rule the world and I preferred to be on their side.

Really the only bit of Latin I know is primus inter pares - first among equals, particularly as applied to the British Prime Minister in our parliamentary democracy.

However, news of a prospective constitutional change which might make the PM primus inter dispares connectantur - which is the best I could come up with to indicate first among unequals. If I knew Latin I'd maybe have understood its equivalent of the 'un' prefix; but bear with me.

The report from the Commission for Smart Government, launched on Monday, has a major recommendation for the creation of a "prime minister's department", in order to give more power to the governmental centre to direct departments of state over policy implementation and monitoring.

It sounds dangerously like a move to a more presidential system of government to me. As an antidote to the apparent inability of prime ministers to work through the departmental system and "get things done", it seems to me to miss many points. One of which is that the model, the White House, famously has a constitutionally inbuilt inability to get things done, as a result of the separation of powers and a President's reliance on (a possibly opposing) Congress to pass legislation.

A British prime minister actually has hugely more power than a US President has over domestic policy, to get legislation passed, as a result of having - by definition of our electoral system - an inbuilt majority in the House of Commons and a constitutionally-impaired House of Lords. The report suggests that the problem, once policy is passed into law, is that the governmental system is ill equipped to put that law into effect. Partially because departmental ministers are often incompetent and sometimes recalcitrant. Well, duh, appoint better ones!

I've been mulling this over for five days, trying to decide whether my opinions are worth sharing. Then I read a comment piece in yesterday's Times on the subject by Anthony Seldon and, since many of his views chimed with mine, I decided to publish.

On the "centralisation of power" issue, Seldon tells us "the proposal for a prime minister's department, an old chestnut, ignores history. The best two PMs since 1945, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher, had very small No 10s but used cabinet and the Whitehall system to stunning effect." He follows with "the last five prime ministers didn't fall short because they lacked firepower ... they came to No 10 not knowing what they wanted to do."

Let's look at the problems for good government to which an administration can give birth: a weak cabinet of ministers appointed as rewards for past endeavours and support, a PM who surrounds himself with only those who are unlikely to contradict him [herself/her], a disdain for parliament by announcing policy in media appearances and ministers sending underlings to answer Urgent Questions in the House of Commons and a willingness to flout the law and challenge the courts. You think I'm referring to our present government? It could apply to every government of the last 24 years.

The report proposes a "solution" of recruiting "expert" ministers - business leaders who can "get things done" - but does not tell us how these unelected people would be accountable to Parliament. James Forsyth in the Times last Friday says "a lack of outside expertise is one of the biggest problems that the British government faces." That's almost certainly an exaggeration but, if it is a problem, there is no reason not to bring in experts from time to time to undertake specific tasks - such as Kate Bingham's excellent management of the vaccine taskforce. But such appointments - and their performance - should be scrutinised by the responsible minister accounting to the House of Commons. Seldon's take on this is "bringing in ministers from outside politics would erode democratic accountability and overlooks the hugely capable potential ministers regularly sitting idle on the back benches." I'm not sure who or where these people are but I guess there are always those who have blotted their copybooks in one way or another, probably by disagreeing with the PM at the time; I think it's true of opposition front benches too.

Despite my scepticism, there clearly are problems of government effectiveness in the UK. Which may be true of all parliamentary democracies, for all I know. The report starts from the premise that the problem is systemic, whereas what I perceive (as an informed citizen) is a lack of quality in our political human resources. In a business context, a company would soon look for better staff to replace those failing to "get things done". If prime ministers and their ministers are not good enough, the question is how to get better ones? It's worth reading Why we get the Wrong Politicians by Isabel Hardman, a very good and interesting book. Its central theme is the cultural and economic barriers to entering politics. She discusses the selection of electoral candidates by parties and the likelihood that those chosen will be "conformers" - "one of us". We subsequently see examples of deselection of those whose views do not chime with their party's.

It seems to me that the report provides solutions to the wrong problem; it seems to accept that there is nothing to be done about the standard of our elected politicians and to propose ways to get around that - in effect, to take power and influence away from them with the sole exception of the prime minister of the day, who will be shielded from making errors by the "Number 10 machine". To accept a fundamental failure of our democratic system - to bring in good people - and, rather than seeking ways to reform that system, to denude it. It's a depressing analysis. The headline on Forsyth's article is "It's time to give No 10 real levers of power". Which sounds dangerously Stalinist. No thanks, it's not for me. I prefer the humility and collegiality of primus inter pares.

I'll give Seldon the final say:

Prime ministers ... underachieve because they cocoon themselves with like-minded figures. They should celebrate diversity of perspective, background and expertise ... let's fix what is broken or redundant and make work what is proven.