Allister Heath:
Far from being too radical, Boris Johnson has been too timid in fixing the state’s broken machinery
Who governs this country? It’s no longer Eurocrats in Brussels or judges in Luxembourg, which is a great relief. But who in Britain is taking back control? Will real power lie with the elected politicians, assisted by government employees who work for them and for the manifestos upon which they were elected? Or will it be hoarded by a shameless, self-satisfied Whitehall nomenklatura that has convinced itself that it is the true, permanent government of Britain?
Will the Treasury still be allowed to “veto” new ideas, the Cabinet Office to block non Left-wingers from public appointments, the defence establishment to buy overpriced, overspecced and irrelevant kit, and a self-perpetuating Foreign Office oligarchy to instruct Downing Street on what to think about Israel or China? And are we happy that it is judges, not politicians, to whom we entrust the decision on whether Heathrow Airport’s expansion should go ahead?
Brexit isn’t enough: politicians need to take back control, to renew our democratic culture, reintroduce accountability and improve the quality of the state. They need to be forced to take responsibility, even when they don’t want it. They must become their own masters, working on behalf of their electorate, not spokespersons for out-of-control departments. They need to relearn to be managers, moulding the system to their commands. They should hire their own people, not inherit hostile teams.
If politicians cannot make their minds up on an issue, they ought to call referendums, not abdicate decisionmaking to mandarins or judges. Our system of government is no longer fit for purpose: the old Yes Minister Civil Service and its jobs for life and gongs for failure has run out of time; but so has the more recent technocratic and juristocratic experiment.
The deep state needs a reality check: it is not as competent as it believes. Civil servants are not an anointed class. They probably notch up more errors than they prevent ministers from making. They, too, must face a pitiless reckoning. The Treasury was right on the euro and austerity; it is correct to worry about excessively large national debts. But it was catastrophically misguided on monetarism (it fought it), on the ERM, on EU membership and on Brexit, on productivity, financial stability, supply-side economics (it doesn’t believe in it), the useless fiscal rules and many of the other great questions from the past 100 years.
Philosophically, the Treasury is collectivist, viewing tax cuts as “handouts” that are a “cost” to the Exchequer. It played an enabling role in the Brownite revolution and then the Remain counter-coup. It does not deserve an elevated constitutional position with the right to tell the PM what to do – in fact, its litany of failures suggest that it should be drastically downsized, downgraded and turned into a bog-standard finance ministry. As for the Foreign Office, it has been wrong on all the big issues, appallingly so, and the Home Office is a joke.
In the private sector, a new boss tasked with turning around a bankrupt conglomerate would fire layers of management, bring in their own teams, merge or shut subsidiaries and restructure massively. Ideally, the government would commission a new Northcote-trevelyan report and replace the Civil Service with a completely new organisation. At the very least, major changes are required, with the PM as the Government’s CEO.
Boris Johnson, understandably, is focused on outcomes, not processes; at its core, his project is one of national renewal. But a series of massive failures of delivery are inevitable unless he acts urgently. Far from being too extreme, as his critics are claiming, the PM has been too timid. No senior mandarin has yet been asked to leave.
Sir Mark Sedwill, the powerful Cabinet Secretary, appears safe for now. Despite an outrageous clash with Priti Patel, Sir Philip Rutnam, the Home Office permanent secretary, is still in his job. Why? What’s the betting that his hopeless Home Office will fail to push through all of the immigration changes smoothly on January 1? Yes, the Cabinet Office, No 10 and the Treasury are working more closely (though the former was reportedly pitted against Downing Street on the defence review), but there has been no genuine structural revolution.
Reforming the structure of government to make it work better and effectively, whether one believes the state should be larger or smaller, is one of the most hotly debated ideas on the US Right, made all the more pressing by the chaos surrounding coronavirus.
In an influential blog post, Tyler
Cowen, an American economist, recently coined the concept of “state capacity libertarianism”. I don’t agree with all of it, but the core thesis is a brilliant way of looking at Johnsonism. Cowen believes in a strong, efficient state (as well as lower taxes and less regulation) that can extend capitalism and protect markets (including from hostile nations), deal with pandemics, manage immigration and reform state education. State capacity libertarians such as Cowen believe that the US and UK governments are deeply incompetent, but that this can be rectified. They have positive views of infrastructure, science subsidies, nuclear power, space programmes and the various ways that South-east Asian states have developed their economies.
But what of the claim that reforming the machinery of government to bolster “state capacity” would be unconservative? This argument is bogus, as Danny Kruger, a new Tory MP, reminds us in a series of brilliant observations on Twitter. Edmund Burke “campaigned to abolish half the offices of state, especially those hoary with antiquity and irrelevance”, he backed war against France and US independence. Tories often need to be radicals to preserve conservatism. This is one such moment.
Dominic Cummings has read and absorbed Friedrich Hayek: he is no central planner. The reforms first need to centralise, and then decentralise: once the Government is working towards a set of common aims through new structures, contracts and teams, then ministers should be given plenty of discretion to deliver.
It’s time for Boris to turn to another Austrian economist, Joseph Schumpeter, and unleash a dose of creative destruction on our tragically overrated Civil Service.