Jun 27 2007
Who should go in the Brown reshuffle?
Voters want a government which is more competent, above all else. The Blair Ministerial team concentrated on spin to the exclusion of much else. If you got a meeting with a Minister they had sheafs of press clippings and seemed most preoccupied by what had been written about a problem, rather than wishing to sort out the problem for its own sake.In department after department there are countless examples of waste, error and inneffective Ministerial activity. They believe that mouthing the words "We have massive increased investment in…" will see them through every problem, muddling investment for spending and usually unaware of how the money is being used or abused.
We know the Home Secretary goes, the Deputy Prime Minister goes and the Chancellorship is vacant.
It would be a good idea if the Health Secretary and?? the Culture Secretary also went, as the handling of the Health Service and the Olympics have been spectacularly bad even by this government’s standards.
It is widely rumoured David Milliband will be promoted. It is difficult to see why, as his department have bombed over payments to farmers, which he has been unable to sort out properly. He has shown no sureness of touch over global warming, and presided over an increase in UK carbon emmissions last year.??His predecessor, Maragret Beckett,was promoted to the Foreign Office despite this poor performance at Environment.
We should also look for the dismissal of the Defence Secretary, after the shambles of the naval hostages in the Middle East.
We have been marking time for months as Tony Blair said his long farewell and government drifted. Gordon Brown needs to demand higher standards of competence, and show by who he removes that he is serious about rooting out poor performance.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Voters want a government which is more competent, above all else.
Well Labour have already brought back Harriet Harmen who was sacked for incompetence back in 1998. Nick Brown who was sacked for incompetence in 2001 will probably also return. Some newspapers have even speculated that Beverley Hughes who was sacked for incompetence in 2004 might make the cabinet.
They should all go. The problem is that your party isn’t overflowing with talent either.
JR:
The Imperialist Dilemma is one we see in Iraq and domestically. First you shatter the existing institutional structures and centralise power…..increasing control of the government apparatus means less control at street level and the regime frays at the edges as people do their own thing.
Repeated efforts at central control turn out to be exercises in compressing jelly….the Penrose Effect of less and less management control as the scope of responsiblity expands….next step is to pledge to delegate, to empower, to localise….but the withered branches of localism have no green shoots and the competence of those who stayed is so low.
It is a trap - the centre cannot exercise power to produce effect and has no traction at local level because it has uprooted and destroyed the organic nature of community government. England had a strong local government tradition going back at least to Elizabethan times and institutionalised in the 1840s onwards with new Chartered Boroughs….nationalisation of assets and cenralisation of functions has made it impossible for politics to delegate power back because the civic relationship was built in urban centres on the businessmen running the councils; then the shopkeepers; and latterly the national parties; and now it is simply a cipher for the Ministry.
There are few places with a sustainable diversified economic base to make localism work and most would be so dependent upon central funds that ocalism would be a fig-leaf, The Conservatives destroyed local government when Heath implemented Redcliffe-Maud and nationalised water…..and then with rate-capping and nationalisation of business rates. Now the boom is in charity shops which pay no business rates, no wages, and get free stock from the public…..the only way to run a modern urban business.
Anyway the point is simply this - so much power is exercised in Whitehall and the quality of personnel available is mediocre. It is more and more akin to the Gleichschaltung introduced in Germany in 1933 with local government being simply a conveyor-belt from the centre with national agencies to override localism for key objectives. I think after 30+ years of emasculation local government is an historical artefact; but increasingly national government is creaking and failing to fulfil the requisites of even a minimalist state in terms of internal and external security…..we are watching the implosion of government