In my latest video, I argue that the biggest problem Labour will face after 5 July – as a result of which all of us might suffer – is that almost no one in the Shadow Cabinet has any experience of being in government, or of ever having actually run anything of consequence. This might not turn out well.
The audio version is:
The transcript is:
Is Labour ready to govern?
That's a really important question. Because after 14 years of Tory government, most people in the Labour Party now, and most of those MPs who will be elected on the 4th of July, will have no clue how government really works.
They weren't in the last Blair and Brown administrations. Most of them will actually be new MPs come 4th July, because so many Labour MPs will be returned who've never been in Parliament before.
So, Keir Starmer is going to face the most enormous challenge. He's going to have to find people who have no idea what being in government means, who have no idea what practical decision-making in a very large organisation means, and he's going to have no idea whether those people are going to come up to scratch or not.
He's one of those, of course, about whom we can have doubts. I know he tells us time and again that he ran the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, and he did. And that might suggest, therefore, he has got the skills that could be transferred to being Prime Minister. But look at the people who he's got working with him.
Rachel Reeves has managed, well, nothing, as far as I can see. And now she's going to be asked to manage the Treasury and the economy. An enormous job for which he has no obvious experience.
Wes Streeting is going to be in charge of the NHS. He has precisely no management experience, as far as I can see. He's been a campaigner in some form of politics since, well, basically he left university. So, what skills has he got to bring to the NHS? How does he know how to get the best out of the myriad of people who will be working for him directly, let alone indirectly, right across the NHS? I have no way of knowing.
We are leaping into the dark.
Now I'm not saying that that shouldn't happen. I clearly want an inept Tory government out of office. But what does worry me are two things.
One is that these people are so untested, and yet Keir Starmer is so confident in them. I sincerely hope he's open-minded enough to realise that after a year or so, he's going to have some real duds in his cabinet who will need to be got rid of pretty quickly if he's going to deliver policy in key areas.
Secondly, I go back to one of my regular themes. It worries me that we have such dramatic changes of government so that there is no ongoing experience of how to actually do it among the opposition parties at any point in time. If we had a system of proportional representation - single transferable votes in multi-member constituencies across this country - so that parliament much better reflected the will of the people of this country, and that there were therefore many more parties in Parliament than there are now, many more of which will eventually form a part of a government at some time, that experience of being in office would be more widely spread, and we would, I therefore think, get better government as a result. It's not just ideas that make a politician - although I think they are fundamentally important, and Keir Starmer's team is, sadly, lacking in them - practical hands-on experience in managing people is also essential.
And I know no way in which somebody gets that experience except by doing it. I certainly had to learn it on the job. I've been senior partner of a firm of accountants, a chairman of companies, a chief executive of companies, a finance director of companies. In all those roles, I had to learn how to manage people, or it didn't work.
But when I look at the shadow cabinet team, I don't see that depth of experience. And as I say, that really worries me.
I think we need two things. One, proportional representation to ensure that we have a deeper experience of government. And two, political parties who are open minded as to their skills and willing, where necessary, to draw on outside expertise in a constructive manner.
And here I would draw on the Norwegian system of ministerial appointment. In Norway, people aren't appointed to something like the House of Lords if a government wants to make them a minister.
They can't be a senior minister if they're brought in from outside politics, but they can be a minister.
They can come in for a temporary period in office, in government, as a minister, to lend expertise and then go back to whatever job they had before. Even civil servants can be curiously transferred from being in the civil service to being a minister and go back again precisely because their expertise is of importance.
We need to rethink how we get the right people in government in this country. Because right now I think Keir Starmer is going to expose, very horribly, the shortfalls in the system that we have.
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As with any ministerial team they will have to learn that they can’t be everywhere and do everything.
They can set high level policy direction and leadership, but they will have to rely on the civil service for implementation, and in most cases on doctors and nurses and care workers and job centre staff and local authority workers and an army of other public and private sector workers to do actual things that affect the lives of real people.
And also that implementation of any substantial policy is very much more than an announcement. Wishing it were done does not make it done.
To pick one example, in the first leaders debate, Sunak claimed to have changed the non-dom regime already. Er, no. There have been announcements, but no legislation and no implementation. Not yet.
Agreed
Different perspective from Oliver Haynes – suggesting Starmer , like Macron may try to govern through consultants and lobbyists rather tha directly – with potentially catastrophic consequences.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/18/macron-consultants-lobbyists-starmer-labour-
This is exactly right.
I recommend reading morozov on “solutionism”.
It’s when consultants peddle plausible sounding solutions to complex problems that they have a vested interest in politicians being sold.
It happens a lot in healthcare where politicians want to hear they can get more for less.
Streeting seems particularly vulnerable to being sold a litter of pups.
Is the idea being expressed that you should reconsider voting for someone because they’re a younger cohort and it’s a long time since they last won?
Tony Blair did a decent enough job of managing a new intake of MPs in 1997. I can only give my opinion but I think Sir Keir Starmer will do all right. There’s sufficient people with experience of government office in his time such as Miliband, Cooper and of course Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson are effectively team Labour at the moment too.
And Blair and Mandelson do not worry you?
I think that says all we need to know
I think the thought that Mandelson’s and Blair’s consultancy interests have a direct line into government decision making, both unseen and unanswerable, is something to fear rather than celebrate.
One of their acolytes, a certain Alan Milburn is going to assist Streeting with his health outsourcing. So that’s okay then. Plenty of expertise there..
Blair and Mandelson……??
WTF. !
Yes, I’m worried.
There’s unfinished business there and I regard their influence as malign.
………So malign that I wouldn’t allow Gordon Brown to walk my dog.
Starmer has referred to “working people” as people who work, but have no savings. This is old-fashioned Labour dog whistling. He just couldn’t resist it. The problem is, nobody understands what he means. I do not mean that people who work but have no savings do not exist; but few have any meaningful relationship with the Labour Party, or have any reason to trust them – or any politician. They have ben fed lies and false prospectuses for too long. They have been hustled by smooth, glib ‘representatives of the people’ who only represent a quasi-corporate, self-interested political cabal of both left and right, and swallowed guff whole, once to often. The constituency he is whistling no longer exists. Forty years of Neo-liberalism, and a ‘community’ of working people, a ‘working class’ has long gone. Notice, he uses the term “people”, not “class”. He knows he can’t use that difficult word. He doesn’t realise the substance that bound the word has also long gone.There is nobody there. This is a reminder of how badly Labour is stuck in the past, and can’t help milking a cheap gesture to a constituency Starmer clearly does not understand. Starmer, Reeves and Streeting are not Atlee, Bevan or Keir Hardie. It is absurd.
Starmer, stop it. It merely makes you look shifty.
Agreed
SIr Keir Starmer, ‘We cannot afford to tax the rich.’ May 2024.
So how much on average do working CLASS people have in savings?
“As of January 2024, a survey from Finder has revealed that the average UK adult has £11,185 in savings. Despite this about 46% of people have £1000 or less in savings and 25% have £200 or less.”
(26/1/ 24 Finance Monthly)
That’s some ‘precariat’….
Another quote is that “a third (33%) of UK savers said they would struggle to cover a month’s worth of living expenses if they lost their primary source of income.”
Given a 68m population that’s an awfie lot of working CLASS people with hardly any backstop at all,
(but it looks as if the mean is skewed by some very high savers distorting that ‘average’ figure if there are over 30m folks with <£1k.)
Still plenty of working CLASS people then for Rachel to "make feel" they are better off' !
Thanks
John Warren
Sorry John, there is a typo in your last word. You have put f instead of t.
There is an article of interest in the Guardian, pointing out parallels between Starmer and Macron, and their reliance on focus and interest groups, and how that doesn’t reflect what happens in reality. We seem to have had a permanent political class, for decades, with little contact with life as it is lived for most people.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/18/macron-consultants-lobbyists-starmer-labour-
Thanks
Good points. Ref the Norwegian system – very similar in the Netherlands – appoint experts as ministers to do what they are good at and leave the politicos to set the overall direction and tear lumps out of each other.
Such a good idea
Warning! Warning! Warning! Yank “Lost in Space”.
Why does one have to be an MP or a Lord to be in the British Cabinet? One cannot be in the US Executive Branch Cabinet and be a member of the House or Senate. You have to resign your seat.
If Joe Blow Smow is elected as POTUS, he can put anyone he wants in his cabinet as long as they receive Senate Confirmation.
If Joseph Blowhard Smow-Smythe becomes UK Prime Minister and he wants James Dyson, Richard Branson or Alannah Elizabeth Weston in his cabinet, why should he not be allowed to do so after gaining appropriate confirmation? I know I am missing something because I just don’t get it. Seems to me much talent, that could aid the government, is being wasted because someone is not a MP or Lord.
One say over here ‘Them’s the rules’
So we end up with vast numbers of Lords who had a ministerial post for a few months
We need to change the rules, as on so much else
Thanks for the explanation.
Another thing I do not get is The House of Lords. It is a good idea in theory, a nominated Senate for life, but the idea is poorly executed in my arrogant YANK opinion.
I disagree with ‘poorly’
‘Diabolically’ is better
@Richard Murphy “One say over here ‘Them’s the rules’”
Actually it’s only a convention that a minister must be a member of one of the Houses of Parliament. The last person to hold a ministerial position while not being a member of either house was Patrick Gordan Walker.
After Labour won the 1964 general election, Gordan Walker was appointed foreign secretary by Harold Wilson even though he had lost his Smethwick seat in the general election. In 1965 he stood in the ‘safe’ Labour seat of Leyton in a by-election and lost. He resigned the post a few weeks later.
Thanks
I am late logging in today as I am recovering from covid.
On reading the post, i was going to raise the appointment of outside experts.
The difficulty for the present arrangements is that Ministers have to report to the Commons and membership is by election.
They could change the rules. For example a number of seats could be allocated by the PM to appointed Ministers for as long as they are ministers. Some ministers could be MPs or could initially serve as deputies with a view to later promotion. The appointed ministers would have to be in the cabinet so would play a part in the determination of general policy. Some would say govt should be by elected members.
They could use committees as in the USA
There could be a creative solution in a Senate which replaces the House of Lords.
I read Darling’s book on the Global Financial Crisis. He writes about an international meeting of finance ministers most of whom were appointed. He was one of the few who were elected politicians. So there are other models to consider.
Thank you, Ian.
I was at the banking trade body or worked on regulatory policy at a big bank during Darling’s chancellorship. He wasn’t in charge. I doubt that he would have done anything different had he been his own man. He was another neo-liberal.
Agree with all that from what I saw
It’s like that in most of Europe (world?). Executive and legislative branches are separated and don’t mix, but the legislative branch appoints the executive and controls them. It’s quite a strange concept for the Brits as there’s this feeling that members of government have to be directly ‘elected’ (even if only in their own constituency) to have a democratic mandate. It was used in the Brexit referendum re the Commission – who elected them etc (the answer is MEPs – elected at the EU elections – and the heads of 27/8 (at the time) states who else have a democratic mandate).
I’m an ex-Civil Servant, so probably biased, but – wasn’t “continuity and expertise” the raison d’être of the Civil Service?
One has only to look at the disasters in inexperienced administration that happens at every change of POTUS to see the dangers of ignoring the stability of the Service in good government.
A government that knows *what* it wants to do, with a First Division of CS that knows *how* to do it – surely the lack of ideas in the first and the lack of trust in the latter (engineered by Cummings – remember him?) is the reason for the current angst about the vagueness of the hustings.
And an assured Civil Service given full recognition is a (possibly small) bulwark against the lobbyists, I would hope.
I so agree
I also agree. Much rather an “apolitical” CS than a hand-picked arse-lickers echo-chamber, providing there is a way of ensuring the CS is eclectic in its knowledge and learning and can be prevented from developing a severe case of group-think?
And how to get input from “contrarians” like RM?
Too often people are seconded from the ranks of the foxes to devise ways to regulate those same foxes and then go back to the foxholes knowing where to find all the hidden tunnels into the chicken house.
And politicians will say they make the decisions and just ignore expert advice from the CS or anyone else and, apparently, that’s democracy and there’s no real accountability for disastrous decisions.
Moi? A contrarian?
“that’s democracy and there’s no real accountability for disastrous decisions”
The accountability for elected officials is the ballot box. The Tories are learning about this via checking into the “Real World Hotel” as I type. The only thing I do not comprehend is why it took 1O years to get them out of power as the kingdom crumbled around them.
Thank you and well said, Richard.
I would add the following:
If one looks at candidates being selected, one notices ties of bed, blood or business. It seems, and New New Labour is worse than than the Tories in that respect, a caste is emerging that is detached from most people. Some examples: Streeting’s fiance, Joe Dancey, is candidate in Stockton. Streeting’s ex adviser was recently elected MP for Selby and Ainsty and remains candidate there. Liam Conlon, candidate in Croydon, is the son of Sue Gray. Hamish Falconer, candidate in Lincoln, is Lord Charlie’s son. Rachel Reeves is likely to be joined by her sister Ellie in government. Last Friday, David Miliband campaigned in my home town, the first time that Labour has campaigned there for three decades. Rumours persist Miliband will get a job here.
The reliance on Tony Blair’s organisation, with its donors in the background, and City institutions, whose “fingerprints are all over the Labour manifesto”, and, probably, John Caudwell.
Starmer was a renowned micro manager as DPP. That’s not going to work in government. His other personal, ahem, qualities aren’t going to cut it, e.g. screaming I can’t stand tree huggers at Ed Miliband. One also wonders, with regard to foreign policy, he will put his personal zionism aside.
This relates, in part, to the issue that we’re now well into the second generation of politicians the most of whom have no experience since student politics of anything except politics where in nearly all situations to say is to do and delivery is incidental because the politician is rarely in the position where delivery is an option. There is a need for a robust and knowledgeable Civil Service and outside expertise is also desirable but the effectiveness of either depends on politicians’ ability to make effective use of them. We’re living through the consequence of that deficit. There needs to be a formal, mandatory, induction programme for new MPs. As well as the stuff of Parliament it needs to include modules on macroeconomics, jurisprudence, project management, statistics and personnel management. There’s a case for all sorts of other things to be included but I’ve limited it to the skill sets they will need for the basic role of being a constituency MP supporting and/or critiquing the legislation and work programmes of the executive. We can’t carry on pretending that all our amateurs are gifted.
Quote: “no experience since student politics of anything except politics where in nearly all situations to say is to do and delivery is incidental because the politician is rarely in the position where delivery is an option.”
I agree on the importance of the civil servants being experienced but this should also be partly true of prospective cabinet members. None will be newly elected because they should have been learning their trade in the shadow cabinet. Shadow cabinet members should be dealing with the civil service already and if they are not, why not? New MPs can aspire to cabinet by being junior (or assistants to) ministers first. They really should have some idea before they get one of those red boxes.
Pretending to be a minister and being a minister are very different things
Can we get away from this silly idea that elected officials actually run departments.
As someone who worked in local government and occasionally central government throughout my career, I was always aware that whilst elected officials like to think that they run their respective departments they were, in fact there to support “ the more considered programs devised by the paid staff “
If we can return to this, having the continuity provided by the civil service and paid staff , I hope that with the new crop of elected representatives that are likely to be in place after the election, we will have a more considered approach to policies for the country.
I would suggest that the first job of a new minister is to listen to the people on the front line, they may actually know how things work and what is going wrong.
Incidentally, I thought we already had the Norwegian system, except that the outside ministers are called SPADs?
Hi Richard,
Firstly let me congratulate you. Your short videos on the election are excellent. Very well done.
A little off topic…
Will Dunn in the New Statesman says Britain is bankrupt and the solution is to means test the state pension. Further he suggests that a new government with a large majority could enact it.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/business-and-finance/2024/06/britain-is-bankrupt-now-time-raid-pension-fund
I am vehemently opposed to means testing of the state pension believing strongly that it should be universal. A better solution, in my opinion, would be higher taxes on very wealthy pensioners via a progressive tax system.
I would be very interested in your view should you think it worthy of a blog post.
Regards.
It’s so stupid it is hardly worth responding to.
We are a country worth £15 trillion with an enormous capacity to tax more.
We can create currency and it is universally acceptable.
And he says we’re bankrupt. Is he looking for a job in Tufton Street?