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When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, he promised joined-up government. When he was re-elected in 2001, he promised the effective delivery of public services. Both proposals were good ones. Neither has been achieved. There was "a conspicuous lack of a single coherent strategy for government as a whole," a report from the Institute for Government declared yesterday. Downing Street was "completely dysfunctional," adds the memoirs of Peter Watt, a former Labour general secretary, serialised at the weekend. When he arrived as prime minister, Gordon Brown was "simply making it up as he went along", Mr Watt cries.
What went wrong? In their different ways both the institute's report "“ which draws on evidence from 61 senior officials "“ and Mr Watt's book provide part of the answer. British government is both too centralised and too fractured. The senior civil service owes its loyalties to individual departments, often run in different ways by ministers with conflicting priorities. Joined-up government, Mr Blair's early dream, soon gave way to a tougher world of delivery targets and public service agreements. But the real failure lies at the core, in the three pillars of command, No 10, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office.
The first two of these departments spent much of the last decade at war, as Mr Watt's book will be neither the first nor the last to point out. The third lacks any clear purpose. The extreme disfunctionality of the relationship between Mr Blair and Mr Brown wasted Labour's opportunity. Each department was suspicious "“ at best "“ of the other's intentions. The Treasury intruded into all areas of domestic policy; so did Downing Street. In 2001 alone it set up the prime minister's Forward Strategy Unit, the Delivery Unit and the Office of Public Service Reform, to work alongside the existing Performance and Innovation Unit. By 2007 all of them had been moved, merged or scrapped. No wonder the government has proved very bad at setting out a strategic direction, very bad at building links between departments and very good at tangling things up in muddle.
The institute's report is full of civil service speak "“ things such as "silos", "cross-cutting agreements" and "strategic capacity". It even discusses what the well-bred mandarin should do when faced with a "trilemma". But it is outstandingly well-informed and correct in many of its judgments. It is in essence a plea for long-term focus and clarity at the top of government. As Mr Watt's book shows, these are impossible to achieve when politicians or officials fall out. Unless the people at the top can agree what they want, they will fail. There are lessons for both Mr Brown and David Cameron in that.
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19 Jan 2010, 12:15AM
Labour would have had quite a good chance of winning a fourth term if Blair were still PM.
Brown, single-handed, has all but demolished the Labour party.
19 Jan 2010, 12:17AM
Downing Street was "completely dysfunctional," adds the memoirs of Peter Watt, a former Labour general secretary, serialised at the weekend. When he arrived as prime minister, Gordon Brown was "simply making it up as he went along", Mr Watt cries.
Its what you should expect from a perambulating personality disorder.
19 Jan 2010, 12:19AM
" When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, he promised joined-up government. When he was re-elected in 2001, he promised the effective delivery of public services. Both proposals were good ones. Neither has been achieved.
This paragraph gives all the reason for sending Labour into exile. But then add to it the wilfulness with which the twin leaders of New Labour sabotaged each other, the five wars, especially taking us to war with Iraq on calculated lie and manipulation, the economic disaster they lead us to justifies them going into exile for two decade.
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