It’s not often a single politician gets the blame for a policy that crashes and burns. Of the exceptions, one thinks of wars – Chamberlain, Eden and Blair are all now indelibly linked to failure in that regard. In peacetime we have Thatcher and the poll tax and Duncan Smith and Universal Credit. But responsibility for what goes wrong is often lost in the Whitehall mists of forgetfulness, or in the jargon ‘buried.’ I was rummaging around in my old files the other day when I came across this piece I wrote for LabourList in 2011. It had taken years for a costly failure to be recognised, that is long after the perpetrators were out of office. I suppose it will be years – if ever - before David Cameron is brought to book for his mis-conceived EU referendum. Does government have a learning curve?
.................................. “The National Audit Office has published a report which exposes the £500 million of public funds wasted on the ‘FiReControl’ system – a plan launched under Labour to regionalise the fire brigades control system. The NAO said the project was ‘flawed from the onset.’ The project failed and we now have half a billion pounds invested in empty regional control centres, useless and redundant. How could it have happened? I remember this scheme well. The FBU insisted years ago that it was going to be a waste of money – and that even if it got off the ground it would not enhance public safety one jot. Quite the opposite. I wrote to ministers, but to no avail. It was as if the trade union perspective was as passé as the winter of discontent. Why raise the matter now? Surely we would rather the public believed that this was a failure of some obscure government or a failure of a rogue department rather than – God forbid – our fault. According to Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, “We will want to know how the department got in to this mess and why the taxpayers will be saddled with a burden of at least £469 million.” (Guardian, 1/7/11) I have to say Margaret, we were in charge – and the FBU’s argument was treated with haughty disdain. This was a not inexpensive example of how institutional arrogance, the product of political hubris, got in the way of common sense. It demonstrated how we should have recognised the role our partners in the trade unions have in informing the development of public services. But they, the trade unions, were implicitly regarded as too heavily ‘producer’ orientated and thus only bothered about their own well-being. Of course, ministers have to be decisive but we ended up making so many mistakes without pause it became an embarrassment. Our last five years in government became the embodiment of the old saying ‘activity is not a substitute for achievement,’ an epithet of managerialism if there ever was one. We were obsessed with re-arranging the delivery of services without asking whether our last re-arrangement had succeeded. Talk of a Maoist revolution – it was more like a flower arranger on speed. I believe that at the heart of this hyper make-believe activity was a nagging fear. It was the fear of – forgive me – an existential political emptiness, a loss of direction which could only be filled with management consultants and their unerring ambition to re-arrange deck chairs. At the heart of the refounding of Labour we need an open dialogue with the trade union movement and many other partners (let’s drop this stakeholder crap – it means nothing to anybody). Should we need reminding – trade unions probably have the largest ‘third sector’ membership in the country? Dialogue means honesty all round and less of the patronising talk which tends to ebb and flow on all sides. If we’d listened seven or eight years ago, it could be persuasively argued that the deficit might be half a billion quid smaller. But it wasn’t fashionable to listen to the FBU, a classic ‘producer interest’ union, even whilst our Prime Minister donned a white tie and tails to wait upon the Mansion House set. As somebody once said, it’s time to press the reset button. Endless doses of re-organisation are not a sign of virility. It is a lesson the ConDems have yet to learn, but once again, it is the poor so-called stakeholders who will suffer. Afterthought: with years of managerialism in practice, how is it that the MoD can’t account for £6billion of assets? Fetch the consultants!” .............................................. There’s a good lesson here for a post-managerialist Labour Party.
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An email arrives from B&Q “to let you know about some important changes to the Diamond Card discount.” When a retailer refers to important changes it usually means price rises, and so it is in this case. Grey Wednesdays are over – that is when the over-60s could enjoy a 10% discount on everything instore. Now the discount is to be limited to ‘gardening products’ only. This of course is all in aid of maintaining ‘our best price every day you shop.’ Given that B&Q rarely was the cheapest place to buy stuff – but simply had a bigger choice under one roof – I can now envisage diamond DIY geezers shopping around a lot more, perhaps even making more use of the internet. I think B&Q have shot themselves in the foot. I don’t think people minded paying a little extra to get a little discount. That’s the curious psychology of the consumer, daft as it seems. 2. When Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader in 2015, anti-semitic incidents in the UK actually dropped, according to the Community Security Trust. They have sadly risen again. But between 2012 and 2014 they doubled. If I recollect, that’s during Ed Miliband’s term as leader of the Labour Party. He was a Jew of course, once photographed eating a bacon sarnie, and many times demonised, along with his father by the right-wing press. I don’t recollect the Jewish Labour Movement or the Board of Deputies attacking the right wing media with the venom they now reserve for Jeremy Corbyn. 1
Here’s something you won’t get with electronic books, and indeed don’t often get with secondhand books either – a previous owner’s inscription. Writing your name in your latest book used to be quite a regular thing. Indeed, some went further: my parents had elaborate gummed book plates, the purpose of which I think was as much decorative as a reminder to borrowers to return the volume, preferably in good shape. In my recently acquired copy of Herbert Read’s Art and Society (2nd edition, 1945) is written the name Rex C. Russell, 1946, London. I suspect Mr Russell owned this book even perhaps until he died in 2015 at the age of 98. He had obituaries in the Guardian and the Market Rasen Mail, and it turns out he was an eminent local historian, educator, author, artist and for some years a lecturer at Hull University and with the WEA. He reportedly cycled to his village classes even in winter, arriving with icicles hanging from his beard. I recall a similar experience when I was a postie in the 1970s. Many of his books on rural life in Lincolnshire are still on sale on Amazon. Does it not add something to the quality of a book that it passed through another reader’s hands, that it may have had some profound influence on somebody else’s life? Mr Russell had not long left the army in 1946 and was shortly to go to Durham University as a mature student. Read’s book surely had an influence on him. And judging by the fact that it still has its original dust jacket, he cared for it. I guess if he paid 15 shillings (about £22 today) for it in those difficult times, he would. I got it for £4. I’m not sure all of what Read says has stood the test of time though – he was very reliant on Sigmund Freud – psycho-analysis was quite fashionable in the 40s and 50s I believe. Still a bargain is a bargain. 2 I am actively considering cancelling my subscription to the Guardian. Its coverage of the so-called ‘Labour is anti-semitic’ story has largely been one sided, lacking in balanced analysis and clearly grounded in an agenda which seeks to return Labour to centrist ‘safe hands.’ An article by Gaby Hinsliff given prominence today I think merits the Melanie Phillips award for hysteria. Here’s a sample: “It’s perfectly possible to offer more social housing, renationalised railways and a welfare system in which people don’t starve without a side order of Mossad conspiracy theories. The idea that you can’t have one without another – that unless we all agree there’s nothing wrong with calling Jews Nazis, then left-wing economic beliefs will somehow die – is grotesque. And if Corbyn struggles to separate the two, then sooner or later the Labour Party must find someone who can.” How the fuck did this garbage get past the boy pushing the Guardian tea-trolley, never mind a sub-editor? I might as well read the Daily Mail is what the Guardian seems to be saying. I don’t suppose the latest effusion of the ‘Labour is an anti-semitic party’ proxy war has anything to do with the current elections to the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has it? This after all is the body which deigned to actually think about the now infamous definition of anti-semitism before adopting it – unlike the Conservative Party, which panicked after Channel 4 last month discovered that not a word about ant-semitism appeared anywhere in their code of conduct. For Labour at least, this was not a tick box exercise. I hope the NEC sticks by its definition which only departs from the ‘international’ working definition in relation to some wording about Israel in some ‘illustrative examples.’
That this is a proxy war is amply demonstrated by the fact that the ‘mainstream’ Jewish bodies, the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council did not call out the Conservative Party for not adopting any definition prior to Channel 4’s exposé last month. For months, all the attention was on Labour. Now, predictably, stories are emerging which suggest that the anti-Corbyn camp, in the media and elsewhere have been trawling through his past to find whatever ‘dirt’ they can. Hence, we have heard about a meeting he attended in 2010 – where the lead speaker was a survivor of Auschwitz but no fan of Israel – and so is deemed controversial. So controversial, in fact that the Campaign Against Anti-semitism launched a complaint about Corbyn’s involvement – eight years later . . . This is all given ample coverage in the Guardian, which as ever unfailingly reports the views of what I can only describe as our very own rent-a-gob MP, anti-Corbynite John Mann. What I wonder is the secret alchemy which ensures that of all the backbench Labour MPs they could approach for a comment, the roulette ball always plops into Mr Mann’s slot? Is it lazy journalism, or what? As regards the balance of coverage in the Guardian, it seems that this can only be partially achieved through the letters columns, rarely in its news columns. For those seeking to undermine Corbyn this war of attrition has its risks. The vitriol poured on him prior to the last general election didn’t prevent Labour doing much better than expected – although his detractors would argue Labour should have done even better. No doubt if we’d had, e.g. Owen Smith in charge we would have stormed to victory. The danger of course is that those anti-Corbynites, by pissing so hard into their own tent merely damage the fabric of the whole thing, and thus their own stature suffers too. But since they seem to hate Corbyn more than they hate the Tories (if their deeds are anything to go by) this doesn’t seem to matter. But as yet, they haven’t the courage to leave Labour to form the much rumoured ‘new centre party.’ If only they could attack Corbyn with some honesty they may deserve some credit. |
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