No ministerial speech is complete these days without the phrase ‘the man in Whitehall does not know best’ peppered throughout, demonstrating that the speaker is on the side of the people and wishes to see them free from the meddling of those state bureaucrats. It has come to Tanked Up’s attention that such sentiments appear to be catching on at the nation’s thinktanks (who, as this column demonstrates month after month, certainly do know best).
First up was the IPPR who last month asked how well-equipped that Whitehall monolith, the Treasury, is to weather the financial crisis. Writing in Public Finance magazine, associate director Guy Lodge and senior economist Tony Dolphin claimed that ‘doubts are growing over whether the department is up to the job’. The last 10 years saw the Treasury extend its tentacles around policy areas beyond its traditional remit, such as welfare reform and social policy, but now, as the financial crisis engulfs the wider economy, it is having to revert to its traditional position as the ‘government’s finance director’.
‘Instead of publishing policy initiatives, it will have to resume its conventional role of saying ‘no’, and macroeconomic and fiscal priorities are, once again, top priorities,’ the duo wrote. ‘Such role reversal will not be easy … The economic rule book that has governed its thinking for the past 30 years has been torn up as government is forced into taking a much more hands-on approach to managing the economy.’
Meanwhile, Reform showed that it, too, was not afraid to have a go at the man in Whitehall, publishing a pamphlet entitled Fit for Purpose – an allusion to those infamous words uttered by John Reid when he took control of the Home Office during the latter days of the Blair era.
The pamphlet, whose authors included Progress contributor Greg Rosen (see p6), warned that changes in social mobility, public services and economic performance depended upon reform of an inefficient and rigid civil service. ‘The systemic weaknesses in Whitehall have built up over the years and are now of critical proportions,’ the report’s authors claimed, adding that it was hamstrung by a ‘culture and structure’ that ‘rewards risk avoidance and punishes innovation’.
The authors added: ‘All political parties should make civil service reform a reality of their shared commitment to localism. At present Whitehall too often claims responsibility for parts of national life – healthcare, education, policing and so on – for which it is simply too remote to be the most effective change agent.’
Talking of fitness and survival, it was recently the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, one historical figure who could justifiably claim to be a ‘change agent’ – though long before it became the latest political buzzword. To celebrate the great scientist’s birthday, the ‘public theology thinktank’ Theos published a survey of the British public’s attitudes towards evolution and made some interesting, if alarming, findings.
Only just over half of those surveyed (54 per cent) knew that Darwin wrote The Origin of the Species, while 3 per cent got him confused with Richard Dawkins, believing he wrote the latter’s best-selling atheist diatribe The God Delusion. One per cent of respondents were really confused, believing Darwin was the brains behind The Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver. That’ll teach them to send their surveys to Lib Dem central office.
One book bound to be on the shopping list of political anoraks is Chris Mullin’s diaries, A View from the Foothills, detailing the travails of a backbench MP (and sometime junior minister) during the years of the Blair government. The Fabian Society hosted an evening with Mullin in conversation with the Guardian’s Michael White, whose very complimentary review of the book described it as ‘a pleasure to read’ and ‘full of gentle humour’. With further volumes set to be published, enthusiasts can look forward to more nostalgic ‘in conversation’ events in years to come.