How they get away with it – being part 5 of the series on the political class

As you saw from the list of 20 odd books a few posts back, the journalists, political scientists and think-tankers have a lot to say about systems of power. Indeed, I often wish they would take an oath of silence – but then I remember they have families to feed…..This means, however, that we stand to be disappointed when we turn to books to help us understand contemporary issues. Several times this blog has gone so far as to urge readers to apply some simple tests when they are flicking books eg on the global crisis eg  early last year one suggested that you go the Preface/Introduction/end-notes/Index and award one point for each positive answer you can give to such questions as –

- Does it say why yet another book is needed to add to the huge pile we already have?

- Does it argue convincingly that the book has something distinctive to say?

- is anything said about the audience the author is aiming at?

- Does it list/identify different schools of thinking about the issue?

- does the author list what subjects (s)he has excluded?

- Is there an annotated further reading list in an annex?

Any book with less than 4 points is probably a waste of your time….

My next post will remind you of some advice I gave readers, authors and publishers earlier this year

But, for now, I want to share an important insight with you all – that after all my reading over the past 50 years the best critique of power is actually a short satirical essay by Anthony Jay (the highly successful scriptwriter of the "Yes Minister" television series of 35 years ago)

The essay is called Democracy, Bernard, it must be stopped and can only be read on my website.

It takes the form of the advice given by Sir Humphrey (the retiring Head of the Civil Service) to his replacement – who, amazingly, turns out to be the guy who 30 years previously was the hapless Bernard. It captures the mechanisms which have been used over the past 50 years to corrupt the political class far better than any book.

Here is the first section (the final section will follow)

The first two rules for neutralising democracy are:

1. Centralise revenue. The governing class cannot fulfil its responsibilities without money. We, therefore, have to collect as much money as we can in the centre. In fact, we have done this with increasing effect over the years, with three happy results. The first is that we can ensure that money is not spent irresponsibly by local communities. By taking 80 or 90 per cent of the money they need in central taxes, we can then return it to them for purposes of which we approve. If they kept it for themselves, heaven knows what they might spend it on.

The second happy result is that the larger the sum, the harder it is to scrutinise. The ₤6,000 or so spent by a rural parish council is transparent and intelligible, and subjected to analysis in distressing detail. By contrast, the three or four hundred billion of central government revenue is pleasantly incomprehensible, and leaves agreeably large sums for purposes which the common people would not approve if it were left to them. It also means that a saving of ₤1 million can be dismissed as 0•0000003 of annual expenditure and not worth bothering with, whereas it can make a lot of difference to the budget of Fidelio at Covent Garden.
The third result is that the more the government spends, the more people and organisations are dependent on its bounty, and the less likely they are to make trouble.

2. Centralise authority. It goes without saying that if Britain is to remain a country of civilised values, the masses cannot be trusted with many decisions of importance. Local government must be allowed to take decisions, but we have to ensure that they are trivial. Meanwhile, we must increase the volume of laws made centrally. We have an enviable record of legislation growth, with hardly any laws being repealed, which it is now your duty to extend. If you are under pressure to provide statistics showing your zeal in deregulation, you will find many laws concerning jute processing and similar extinct industries which can be repealed without too much harm. …
You will also want to ensure that every Bill contains wide enabling powers, so that unpopular provisions can be brought in later as statutory instruments which MPs rarely read and virtually never debate. You should be able to achieve three or four thousand of these in a good year. 

The rest of the rules flow from the first two –

Rule	Reason
3.Capture the Prime Minister	Given the promises a PM makes, it is not difficult to persuade him that he needs more revenue and power
4. Insulate the Cabinet	They must be kept, as far as possible, well away from any contact with the sweaty multitude. This means avoiding public transport by use of private cars, avoiding the National Health Service by private health care etc
5. Enlarge constituencies	In the name of democracy, we have increased constituency size to 50,000 or 60,000, so that no MP can be elected on voters' personal knowledge of him. They vote for the party, and if the party does not endorse him, he will not be elected. His job, therefore, depends on the Prime Minister's approval and not on the respect of his constituents; a splendid aid to discipline
6. Overpay MPs	Even when MPs depend on the party machine for re-selection and re-election, some are occasionally tempted to step out of line. This risk can be significantly reduced if rebellion means not only loss of party support but also significant loss of income.
7. Appoint rather than elect	Government appointment is critical for control of society - so that proper care can be exercised in their selection of the thousands of positions available in Quangos - and so that the incumbents, when chosen, will know to whom they owe their new eminence, while those hoping for such posts (as with honours and peerages) can be trusted to behave responsibly in the hope of favours to come
8. Permanent officials – rotating Ministers	We have built an excellent system of a few transient amateur ministers who are coached, informed, guided and supported by a large department of permanent, experienced officials who enable them to take the correct decisions.
9. Appoint more staff	There are three reasons for this: it increases the volume of government revenue, it extends the area of government control, and it enlarges the pool of voters who have an interest in preserving the system that employs them.
10. Secrecy	Our success is based on the principle that no information should be disclosed unless there is a good reason why it should be. From time to time, opposition parties press for a freedom of information Act, but oppositions become governments and it does not take long for a government to discover that real freedom of information would make their job impossible.

It takes only a few minutes to read the essay – and I would urge you to do so – just click Democracy, Bernard, it must be stopped

Now you can understand why I am such a fan of satire….Some analysts now argue that satire has made us politically cynical and undermined democracy – although I suspect it is more the slow drip of 24/7 news which has done that…..Politicians have certainly become too easy a target. But after wading through so many turgid books about power systems, I have to say we desperately need the gasp of clarity which good satirical writing brings…..

 A Resource on Satire

Satire has long been a powerful weapon against the pretensions of power – Voltaire’s Candide and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels are well-known literary examples. Ralph Steadman and Gerard Scarfe are modern caricaturists in the tradition of Hogarth; and the Liverpool poets (Roger McGough, Adrian Henry) sustained the protestors of the 1960s. British people are not so familiar with the Bert Brecht’s City poems or the savage anti-bourgeois paintings of Georg Grosz in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1987 Management Professor Rosabeth Kanter produced “Ten Rules for Stifling Initiative” which I have often used to great effect in Central Asian training sessions.

1999 saw the appearance of “The Lugano Report; on preserving capitalism in the twenty-first Century” which purported to be a leaked report from shady big business but was in fact written by Susan George.

Management guru Russell Ackoff’s great collection of tongue-in-cheek laws of management –“Management F-Laws – how organisations really work” ( 2007) As the blurb put it –

“They're truths about organizations that we might wish to deny or ignore - simple and more reliable guides to managers' everyday behaviour than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists and philosophers”.

An added bonus is that British author, Sally Bibb, was asked to respond in the light of current organizational thinking. Hers is a voice from another generation, another gender and another continent. On every lefthand page is printed Ackoff and Addison's f-Law with their commentary. Opposite, you'll find Sally Bibb's reply. A short version (ALittle F-book - 13 Sins of management). A typical rule is – “The more important the problem a manager asks consultants for help on, the less useful and more costly their solutions are likely to be”.

Robert Greene’s "48 Laws of Power" may not be satire but it is a very salutary counter to the thousands of unctuous management texts which attribute benign motives to senior management. 

And, to bring this series back full circle to “The Triumph of the Political Class”, a spoof on the British Constitution – called The Unspoken Constitution ( 2009) – had a Preface written by "The Triumph’s...." author - Peter Oborne.

Peter Cook - the greatest of Britain’s post-war satirists - once apparently said, back in the 1960s, “Britain is in danger of sinking giggling into the sea,”