As has been said, don’t expect too much from a Cameron government for when he gets his hands on the levers of power he will find they have been disconnected and when he pulls them nothing will happen.
Disintegration has gone a long way!
Christina
GUARDIAN 25.8.09
Mandarins launch attack on Labour
Former top civil servants criticise party's record on cabinet government
Labour has abandoned cabinet government during its time in power and routinely bypassed the civil service to exert greater political control over Whitehall, some of Britain's most senior mandarins have warned.
In a damning indictment of the Blair-Brown years, four former cabinet secretaries – who served three prime ministers over 26 years – have warned that the presidential style of both leaders is a threat to Britain's constitutional settlement.
In evidence to a Lords committee which is investigating the workings of the cabinet office, the senior figures declared that:
• Britain's "great institution" of joint cabinet government is threatened by the growing power of the prime minister.
• Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have shown little understanding of cabinet government; they operate as a "small unit" and hold "cards rather close to their chest".
• Whitehall has been politicised with Blair and Brown presiding over a "massive increase" in special advisers.
The attacks from the former cabinet secretaries, made in evidence to the Lords' constitution committee, highlight the deep unease in Whitehall at the centralisation of power over the past decade. The senior mandarins, who normally speak in code, have let rip in undiplomatic language in their evidence.
Lord Turnbull, cabinet secretary from 2002-05, describing cabinet government as an important principle, said: "The source of a good deal of government needs to be nourished, nurtured and strongly supported by the cabinet office. Trends have been identified which in some way threaten this great institution and system, in particular the growth in profile of the prime minister … The danger I would want to avoid is the do-it-all prime minister."
Lord Butler of Brockwell, cabinet secretary 1988-98, said Blair and Brown had little appreciation of cabinet convention. In 1997 the pair were "instruments of New Labour, had been used to being a small unit, [holding] cards rather close to their chest, and for that reason were not very much disposed to using cabinet government."
Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, cabinet secretary 1979-87, accused Blair of having a worse record in amassing personal power than Margaret Thatcher. "Some of those methods which he would have chosen conflicted with what I see as the fundamental position of the relationship between the prime minister and departmental ministers. Those frictions actually created bad relations among ministers and were setbacks to the efficient and proper conduct of government."
Brown and Blair also bolstered political control over Whitehall with a "massive increase" in political advisers. Turnbull said: "Brown, when chancellor, created … the panel of economic advisers – it was just a smokescreen to get more special advisers. He had something like nine and No 10 was thick with special advisers … it increased the strength of the centre on policy."
The retired mandarins made clear they were determined to see a return to the tradition in which the cabinet office and the cabinet secretary acted as "guardians of collective responsibility of government" with the prime minister not a presidential figure but first among equals.
Lord Wilson of Dinton, cabinet secretary 1998-02, said: "It would be a mistake to think of this in terms of some slow evolution which cannot be turned back."
But Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, told the Lords committee that cabinet government "died a long time ago".
Powell wrote: "The cabinet is not the right body in which to attempt to make difficult decisions, it has too many members for a proper debate … it is for that reason that since at least the late 1970s the cabinet has been used to ratify decisions rather than take them."
Turnbull who famously accused Brown of acting with "Stalinist ruthlessness, said that Brown, Cameron and Osborne had entered parliament too young. "They are not people of seniority and wisdom."
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EUREFERENDUM Blog 25.8.09
Not unrelated
Posted by Richard North
[A valuable commentary to the above Guardian article comes from the EUReferendum Blog. I give it here, only omitting the introductory paragraphs summarising what ‘s in the Guardian -cs]
A piece in The Guardian today (yes, another one) has our Mandarins launching an attack on Labour, criticising the party's record on cabinet government.
[- - - - - - - - -]
Read alongside the interview with Lord Salisbury, which we summarised in late July, this paints an interesting if disturbing picture of the breakdown of our fundamental structures of government.
Salisbury, you will recall, was worried about the "parliamentary muscle" having atrophied, leaving us with "a vast, complicated, self-referential bureaucracy." He warned that, when Cameron tried to implement his own agenda, "He will go into Whitehall and pull the levers and find that nothing works." "I don't think he realises how Whitehall has become so broken," said the noble Lord.
When the civil servants are also complaining, there is clearly something amiss – especially as, with the growing power of the European Union, it is the bureaucrats who have gained most, at the expense of both ministers and parliament.
Probably, what is happening is that, in the areas dominated by EU policy – such as agriculture and environment – the civil servants are left to run their affairs alongside our masters in Brussels, with very little interference from ministers or MPs. On that, the Mandarins are silent.
Of those policy areas where there is less interference from Brussels, however, ministers seem to be taking a far greater managerial role, cutting out the traditional structures, hierarchies and lines of demarcation, leaving many of their senior civil servants in the dark as to what is going on.
On the other hand, though, in by-passing the Mandarins, ministers are clearly finding it more and more difficult to enforce their wishes and diktats, as the two sides are no longer talking to each other freely, or working together. And while even senior civil servants cannot make and enforce their own policies, they have an endless capability to sabotage anything a government might wish to implement, should they be so minded.
This may be one of the dynamics affecting defence, about which we have so recently written, where ministers (and the prime minister) are no longer in the thrall of their civil servants but are increasingly finding it difficult to impose their collective wills. The levers of power have indeed become disconnected.
If the dysfunctional performance of the current administration is not unrelated to these developments, then this further reinforces the view that there are serious repairs to the system required, before government can begin to function effectively again – if indeed that is possible, given how much power has drained elsewhere.
The retired mandarins, however, want to see a return to the tradition in which the cabinet office and the cabinet secretary acted as "guardians of collective responsibility of government" with the prime minister not a presidential figure but first among equals. This may be the civil services' ticket to restoring some of its own power over government, but since so much of that power is simply now exerted on behalf of Brussels, this will not necessarily improve matters.
Short of that, though, we are left with a situation where, increasingly, no one is really in control and the machinery of government will continue to deteriorate. That which has been so easily broken cannot be so readily mended.
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