Don't forget, we have a new government
Change is on everyone's mind, and we should use this to think about the future
At the beginning of this week, I expected all of my attention to be fixed on the appointment of the new prime minister and the construction of a new government. Who would fill ministerial posts, what would it say about the next couple of years, and would the new administration have a clear ideological direction and ideas for how to implement change?
It all changed with the news that the Queen was under medical supervision at Balmoral on Thursday. That the royal household was willing to make this fact public, given their tendency to underplay matters and keep information tightly controlled, gave me a sense of unease, and, like many people, I began to think that this was serious, perhaps the beginning of the end. But I had seen the Queen on television on Tuesday, seemingly cheerful and bright as she appointed Liz Truss as her 15th prime minister. Surely this would be another false alarm, another scare, and Her Majesty would go on, ageing and tiring, certainly, but continuing to defy statistics and actuarial charts.
Of course it was not to be. The end came quickly. Once we knew that senior members of the royal family were heading north to Balmoral, I knew in my heart that it was time. I remember being summoned to my father’s deathbed in 2017, and I recalled the speed with which advice to think about coming home from London had become an urgent summons to make haste. His precipitate decline was mirrored in what I imagine was the Queen’s. Soon it was announced she had died, and her extraordinary 70-year reign had come to an end.
The next week and more will be consumed—rightly—with obsequies for Her late Majesty and adjustment to the fact that we now have a king again. I suspect Elizabeth would have had a degree of impatience with the pomp surrounding her passing, but it’s appropriate: we need to mark her death and we need to grieve as a nation. More than anything else, we owe it to her for seven decades of impeccable service.
Meanwhile there is still a government to be assembled. The new prime minister appointed her cabinet on Tuesday and made some junior ministerial appointments on Wednesday, but the task is not complete, and it will be delayed for a few days. We can wait, though not long. In a fortnight, or less, Truss will need to face her new task, of governing at least until the next general election (due no later than January 2025, though I suspect it will come in the summer of 2024) and of addressing the pressing challenges like rocketing energy prices, the cost of living crisis and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
The new cabinet was greeted with mixed reviews. Much partisan sport was had in criticising the calibre of ministers and the experience and ability of those taking charge of departments of state. I think a lot of this has been unfair, but it is predictable. Even one as Tiggerish as Truss cannot have expected glowing notices from the Opposition. What is true, however, is that a majority of portfolios have changed hands, many ministers are taking charge for the first time, and there is an opportunity, if she wants it (and I think she does), to mark a change of direction, atmosphere and pace from Boris Johnson’s time in Downing Street.
I believe in the power of optimism to an extent, though it is clearly not a panacea. The kind of mindless good humour that we associate with doomed soldiers climbing out of their trenches in the First World War will not be enough to address the problems the country faces. But drawing a line in the sand, catching our collective breath and starting anew has some power.
There is a strand of opinion which seems, though I suspect it is not much given to self-analysis, to favour a kind of technocratic government of experts: the argument goes that clinicians should run the Department of Health and Social Care, teachers the Department of Education, economists the Treasury and so on. (Oddly, this claque seems less keen on soldiers being in charge of the Ministry of Defence, perhaps because of some atavistic, progressive distrust of men and women in uniform.)
That is not how our system works. And I don’t think it should be. I like the fact that we have ministers who are directly accountable to Parliament, attuned to politics and deeply connected to everyday concerns in their constituencies. I also think that “experts” can be too far in hock to received wisdom, too wedded to special interests and too narrow in focus. Furthermore, I think a blend of political nous and accountability can be married to expert advice from the civil service to produce positive results.
The precedents for appointing technocrats are not especially promising in this country. John Davies, the former director-general of the CBI who was parachuted into the House of Commons and quickly made president of the Board of Trade by Edward Heath, was a dismal disappointment in ministerial office. He seemed uncomfortable and out of his depth, ineffective as an administrator and woeful as a politician. Within a decade he was dead, and some of his colleagues attributed his fatal brain tumour to the stress and overwork of a fish out of water.
By contrast, gifted politicians can make a real difference. Peter Mandelson, recalled from the European Commission by Gordon Brown to take over the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (the title would soon change yet again), was rated a success. His civil servants came to adore him fiercely, and his weight in the Labour Party as well as in Parliament gave his department an influence in Whitehall that it would not otherwise have had.
Countless books have been written about how ministers should prepare for government and exercise their ministerial duties effectively. Maybe one day i will add to the list, but at the heart of a successful stewardship of a Whitehall department are, I think, three fundamental qualities above all. Each is rare and vital, none is a “technical” skill, and in combination they are at least necessary—perhaps not sufficient—for sound policy formation and delivery.
The first is a strong work ethic. Being a minister in the Westminster system is a gruelling prospect. Ministers in the Commons will have to tend to a constituency, something that some MPs do as a full-time job, and while voters will cut a serving minister some slack, they will still expect diligent service. On top of that, ministers have the normal nine-to-five (in fact always much more than that) of being the chief executive of a department, whatever its size. (To give an idea of the spread, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has around 3,000 employees, a Whitehall minnow, while the Ministry of Defence has 60,000 civilian staff as well as the armed forces.) On top of that considerable burden, some ministers will carry out extra work behind the scenes, serving on cabinet committees, undertaking international commitments and, from time to time, steering legislation through Parliament.
All of that is the “standard” job. But if ministers are to contribute meaningfully to a collective government, especially one seeking to implement a new ideological agenda, they will need thinking time, the opportunity to explore ideas and engage with policy formulation within the department and proposals from the outside world like think tanks, professional and trade bodies and pressure groups within the Westminster village. This is a crushing workload, and the stress is enormous both in professional terms and on private lives. Minister must be able to work quickly and prepared to put in long hours, which will sacrifice many other commitments on their altar.
The second quality is focus. This connects with the workload: there will always be a Parkinsonian element to ministerial life, as ministers have competing demands on their time, and no minister will ever get to the end of the day, week or month and think with satisfaction that he or she has completed all the tasks necessary. That being so, and to help stay relatively sane, the minister must be able to prioritise and focus his or her attention: it is vital to be able to distinguish between the urgent and the important, to judge between short- and long-term priorities, and to be able to delegate while also remaining on top of their brief.
This task has become more and more challenging as technology has improved and the flow of information has become almost overwhelming. The pace at which decisions must be made—and therefore at which information must be absorbed and digested—has shrunk and will continue to do so. We can look back to a more relaxed golden age: when Sir Alec Douglas-Home was foreign secretary, one of his private secretaries send him home for the weekend with some additional papers marked with a note which read “I thought you might like to look over these while you are at Douglas [one of his country seats]”. The papers were returned unread, and on the note the foreign secretary had written “A kindly thought, but an erroneous one.”
So our cabinet minister must not only be willing to work long hours, but he or she must also use those hours wisely, exercising ruthless prioritisation and grasping almost by instinct those decisions which must be taken immediately, those which can safely be deferred, and those which can be passed down the chain of command to junior ministers or officials.
The final—perhaps most important—quality which ministers must possess is intellectual courage. By this I mean a number of things. He or she must be willing to defend departmental or wider government policy in any forum, from the House of Commons to a BBC radio studio, and that is no small thing. It requires a command of detail but also a sure grip of first principles, and the minister must also have an agile mind and a facility with words if a botched publicity opportunity is not to pull in huge viewers on YouTube or come back in some other way to haunt them. Michael Howard, no intellectual slouch and trained in advocacy from his days at the planning bar, survived his famous encounter with Jeremy Paxman on the BBC’s Newsnight, during which he was asked 12 times whether he had overruled the director-general of the Prison Service and refused to answer. But his credibility was damaged, and his relationship with one of the Home Office’s key agencies, one which, moreover, could throw a publicity disaster at the home secretary at any point.
Ministers must also have the intellectual courage to think radically, and to defy both received wisdom and vested interests. Policy formation is a complex business: much will be conceived in Downing Street by the Number 10 Policy Unit (now headed by the young tyro Jamie Hope), but any government needs an intellectual inflow as well as outflow from the Prime Minister’s Office. Moreover cabinet ministers will always have their pet projects and will want to carve out their own niches with flagship initiatives and programmes.
The sources of advice available to ministers are varied. Each cabinet minister will have a gaggle of special advisers, the politically neutral policy advice of the civil service and endless lobbying from outside groups. If they want to be a success, they must be able to distill and filter this flow of ideas and find policies which are not only eye-catching and potentially effective but also likely to gain financial approval from the stern gatekeepers of the Treasury. Only by having an inquiring and open mind and a willingness to think imaginatively will they make a success of this business and be able to contribute to a coordinated policy thrust by the government.
Of course there are a dozen other qualities the Platonic ideal of the cabinet minister should have. They should be agile and persuasive in debate in the House, efficient managers of people and talent, deft operators in committees and figures of importance in their party. If they can do all of this, as well as maintain some kind of private life and cultivate that political source of envy, a hinterland—whether Denis Healey’s photography or Chris Heaton-Harris’s football refereeing—then fame and glory are assured.
I think, though, that those three qualities I have identified, hard work, focus and intellectual courage, are the sine qua non of political success. It would be nice to think that anyone who rises to the height of the cabinet would of course possess such qualities. More realistically, if half a dozen members of Truss’s new top team were so equipped, it would augur well for the successful progress of the government over the next two years. It may be (he said with laughable false modesty) that not many ministers will read this blog, but it is worth articulating the ideas and releasing them into the political bubble.
The death of the Queen and the accession of Charles III marks an ending and a beginning. As we look forward, let us try, at least, to have a measure of hope and firm purpose as we face the future. The management of decline is a corrosive business and in any case no fun. So let our political masters aim higher: assess themselves and their strengths, the priorities of their departments and their capacity to drive policy and make a real difference to the society in which we all live.