From time to time, there are the old siren voices: let us shake up government, and remove the impediments to getting things done by getting things gone. Many politicians on the journey of their careers will hear these voices and believe that the key to success is to fundamentally change how government works.
But what sirens tell you in the abstract rarely works in concrete, practical reality. Almost all proposals for radical changes to government are framed in general, almost glib, terms: being able to pull levers, removing certain obstructive cultures, taking on “the blob” or “the thing”.
Like a plan for battle, these proposals rarely survive an encounter with reality. One feature of this week’s political drama about the prime minister Keir Starmer’s sacking of Oliver Robbins, the chief Foreign Office civil servant, is the tension (if not contradiction) between what Starmer says about government in general terms and what he does in actual circumstances.
In general, Starmer is prone to saying things along the lines of public servants being “a cottage industry of checkers and blockers slowing down delivery”. One senior civil servant was appointed by Starmer to do “nothing less than the complete re-wiring of the British state to deliver” something or other. (That civil servant was sacked by Starmer months later.)
When asked what he had found most difficult in “delivering” a plan for change, the prime minister told a Commons committee:
Speed and ability to get things done in Parliament. We have so many checks and balances and consultations and regulations and arm’s length bodies. My own sense, after 12 to 18 months in the job—and this is a fault of Governments of all political colours—is that every time something has gone wrong in the past, successive Governments have put in place another procedure, another body or another consultation to try to stop ourselves ever making a mistake again. My experience as Prime Minister is of frustration that every time I go to pull a lever, there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations and arm’s length bodies that mean the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be, which is among the reasons I want to cut down on regulation generally and within Government.
Now let us go from the general to the particular. Starmer wanted Lord Mandelson to be appointed as ambassador to the United States. To use his phrases, he “pulled” the lever to make this happen for the civil service to “deliver” the appointment.
And the civil service did make this happen. It was not a “cottage industry of checkers and blockers”, though it could have been. Civil servants found a way around the “whole bunch of regulations [and] arm’s length” decision-making that could have frustrated or denied the appointment.
The prime minister had announced the appointment against the express advice of the then cabinet secretary that vetting should precede publicity. Instead, the king was asked for his consent. The Cabinet Office said vetting was not even required and the Downing Street machine placed pressure on the Foreign Office.
Serious security risks were identified by the vetting exercise, but Robbins, as an experienced head of the Foreign Office, believed those risks could be mitigated and managed. Robbins “delivered” what Starmer had sought with his “pull of the lever”.
Now, Starmer has realised it was a bad decision to appoint Mandelson. He is said to be “furious”—but not with himself. He is instead blaming and sacking everyone who “delivered” what he wanted: first the ambassador himself, then his chief of staff, and now Robbins.
And, against what he had once told the Commons committee, Starmer is meeting this perceived problem by “put[ting] in place another procedure… to try to stop ourselves ever making a mistake again”. The prime minister is now doing what he and many other politicians before him did when things appear to go wrong: more process, more bureaucracy.
The dismal truth is that, in government, rules and policies and procedures and processes exist not to make things any better (though that sometimes may happen). They exist to stop things getting worse. The free-for-all within government when there are no constraints invariably leads to mishaps and mistakes.
Take, for example, the relaxation of recruitment and procurement rules during the Covid pandemic. Yes, there were isolated examples of that relaxation working well for “getting things done”. But, generally, it opened the British state to lucrative corruption and rampant cronyism at scale.
There is a good reason why political travellers should be wary of the siren voices telling then that the real problem is public administration. In fact, politicians as different as Aneurin Bevan with the National Health Service and Norman Tebbit with his changes to trade union law were able to “deliver” change by working with the civil service rather than against it.
Ulysses was, of course, strapped to the mast so as not to be tempted by the sirens into their trap. Our current prime minister, however, is strapped to a mast in a different way. He is unable to move from talking about change to delivering change. When he does not get what he wants, he is instantly a blamer and a sacker. And so he is strapped to the mast of a sinking ship.
The author is a former central government lawyer
