Baroness Dido Harding and the Peter Principle

THE “Peter Principle” is a management concept. Laurence Peter observed that organisations promote people to their individual level of incompetence and no further.

I’m sure many of us have met someone like that. In “The Office”, David Brent was a shining example and in real life, our government is littered with ministers who lend support to the theory.

Baroness Dido Harding appears to be very much the exception that proves the rule though.

In a series of high-profile roles, which she seems singularly ill-equipped to carry out, serious errors follow her around like a bad smell and incompetence seems to be her passport to one promotion after another.

The latest debacle is the loss of 16,000 coronavirus cases from her “world-beating” test and trace outfit.

Apparently, the “glitch” was that Excel was being used as a database. In addition to not being the right kind of programme for such a vital operation, the version used was also years out of date.

What next? Will we find out that the Chancellor has been using Quicken to work on the budget?

As the test and trace supremo, Baroness Harding should take full responsibility for this potentially life-threatening error and resign.

She could then retire gracefully to the Lords, but of course, she won’t do that.

I imagine a junior administrator will be visiting the job centre shortly after taking the fall.

The most urgent question should now be, how much more incompetence will we have to endure before Dido finally waves the white flag?