The strange British Love Affair with Reform

I had no sooner posted about the need for every country to be critically reviewing its systems of government than the British government came up with proposals for further reform.

It was actually a year ago that the relevant Minister, Michael Gove, first signalled the intention to reform the civil service – but the disastrous performance of the British government (as distinct from the civil service) during the Covid pandemic seems to have persuaded them that, at least for presentational reasons, a rather wider review was necessary. The proposals cover only ten pages (for which parsimony we should be grateful) but seem a bit vague and repetitive to me – with talk of

-       transferring officials out of the capital

-       recruitment system which bring those with different work experience into the system eg from business, local government, voluntary organs  

-       more training for both officials and Ministers

-       establishing more challenging structures to encourage creative thinking and discourage groupthink

-       performance management

-       sharper departmental accountability

-       greater diversity

-       better coordination

-       putting data at the heart of government

-       better use of scientific evidence

Properly to appreciate what’s going on, outsiders need to understand the politics involved.

Michael Gove has been one of the central figures of the Conservative Governments of the past decade – being Minister of Education from 2010-14 when his advisor was the notorious Dominic Cummings who was famously branded by Prime Minister David Cameron a “career psychopath” for his general nastiness and disruptive style.

Cummings then became the Director of the successful Leave Campaign during the Brexit referendum – with Benedict Cumberbatch appropriately taking the role of Cummings in the film “Brexit – the Uncivil War” – but then retired to the sidelines to nurse a rather scholastic blog and a business career.

To everyone’s amazement, Boris Johnson – having won the Prime Ministership (a contest in which Gove had been a major rival) - plucked Dominic Cummings in August 2019 to be his Principal Advisor. Within a few months Cummings was talking of the need for “wierdos and misfits to be at the heart” of the policy-making process – a view fro which I have a lot of sympathy – in fact it’s one I’ve been preaching for some time here. But Cummings is just too abrasive a character to last – and was sacked by Johnson in November last year. 

But hey presto – his philosophy has now become part of the received wisdom of the British Government. The Institute of Government is a fairly recent UK Think-Tank (founded 2008) which has established a good reputation for critical appraisal and has just published its own (short) comment on the government proposals – generally favourable. In what appears a deliberate choreography Cummings had been invited a few weeks earlier to a Parliamentary Select Committee hearing at which he gave evidence for 7 hours about the serious mistakes made by government Ministers – which also attracted favourable comment from the Institute of Government.        

But how come a country famed for its conservatism seems to love reorganisation and reform so much? The link gives access to a timeline detailing the non-stop changes which have affected British civil servants over the past 50 years – many of which have been globally copied – which is part of Martin Stanley’s superb website Understanding the Civil Service

Is this perhaps what Lampadusa meant when he wrote in the famous “The Leopard” that 

“things will have to change in order to remain the same”?

Non-stop organisational reform is not a good idea. Britain’s lack of a Constitution is one of the reasons why British governments are so prone to changing structures. 

“We have a cunning plan” they say – 

but, of course, don’t stay around long enough to pick up the pieces afterwards! 

At least, this time the focus seems to be more about changing "culture" rather than structure. So perhaps some lessons have been learned!  

Further Reading/Viewing

Change for the Better? A Life in Reform; (2021) the present version of a draft which presents a distinctive view of the challenge of admin reform in a variety of countries 

Dominic Cummings’ Evidence May 2021 to UK Parliamentary Select Committee – all 7 hours (Youtube)

Government Reimagined (Policy Exchange 2021) The latest UK Think-Tank report on the subject

The UK Civil Service site’s background note on the Policy Exchange report

The Uncivil War

Books and paintings have been of constant interest for this blog – even music and poems have made an appearance. But I can’t remember a film ever figuring in these columns. It’s not surprising that the first film to make it into the blog is one ……..about Brexit.

Brexit;the uncivil war stars Benedict Cumberbatch (of The Imitation Game fame) and focuses not on the politicians (who figured in such documentaries as Inside Europe: 10 Years of Turmoil – whose three episodes can be seen here) – but on the machinations of the two organisations which ran the respective “in-out” campaigns. Romanian TV showed the film last night - and I was able to download it during the night thanks to zamunda 

And what we see is a vivid example of “outsiders” versus “insiders” – with Cumberbatch playing a not dissimilar role from that in his portrayal in The Imitation Game of the brilliant (if autistic) mathematician Alan Turing who cracked the Enigma code in the second world war. A lot of people were involved in the Enigma process but Turing is the hero of the film – if subsequently one who is disgraced and commits suicide. 
A lot of people were also involved in the UK referendum but the film similarly focuses on the individual brought in in 2015 to head up the Vote Leave campaign - Dominic Cummings (who had been a controversial political adviser to Michael Gove from 2007-2014). As the film makes clear, it was he who made the decision to focus the message on a few points - mainly "cost" and "taking back control" to the exclusion even of immigration as an issue - although this did not stop Farage from concentrating on that......

But the heart of the film deals with the sort of targeting of voters which has only recently become possible in ways few of us understand – although we know it’s something to do with these algorithms

Just a few months before the referendum , Cummings gave a typically truculent performance before the Treasury Select Committee to defend the figures his campaign had publicised as the cost of British membership of the European union.

This appearance coincided with the Cambridge Analytica scandal and, later in 2018, Cummings was invited but refused to appear before the Culture Select Committee to discuss, as the investigation’s ToR put it,

the spread of false, misleading, and persuasive content, and the ways in which malign players, whether automated or human, or both together, distort what is true in order to create influence, to intimidate, to make money, or to influence political elections

Disinformation and Fake News – interim report was the result of the Select Committee’s interesting deliberations….….raising the sort of questions we are beginning to ask about how the commercial world is using social media and algorithms - and trying to give preliminary answers in terms citizens can understand. They are the same issues which Shoshana Zuboff’s brilliant new book Surveillance Capitalism deals with.

The Select Committee’s Final Report was issued just three weeks ago – although the only reason I know is because I bothered to check the Select Committee’s website. OK it’s 100 pages but – like all such reports – it’s written in exceptionally clear language. 

If we have any concern for democracy, this is a subject we need to understand

Cummings may have graduated originally in History (a First from Oxford University) but, to judge from his blog, it appears to be mathematics and grand systems theory which seems to have gripped him more recently. Indeed, in 2013, the Guardian newspaper actually went so far as to give us access to a 237-page “essay” he had made available on his website and to summarise it here.

Shades of Alan Turing indeed!

The Brexit film is actually based on 2 books one of which – “Unleashing Demons” – was written (initially as a diary) by the character played by Rory Bremner but who was, in real life, David Cameron’s Communications Director Craig Oliver. I found a copy this week (for 1 euro) in the great second-hand bookshop in University Square and would have to say that it falls into the category of “quickly forgettable books you pick up at airports” – basically who said and did what when to whom….

The second book - All-out War – the full story of Brexit - which I read last year is a veritable “War and Peace” – at least in its size (700 pages). One of the consequences of its size, however, is that I cannot remember a single thing about the content!

Other resources

Two reviews of the Brexit film are here – and here,

The most thoughtful is this one from a fascinating blog about anthropology and empire written by a Canadian and called Zero Anthropolgy.

One of the key players in the Brexit drama (one of the 2 businessmen who like the politicians are caricatured in the film) has written a good article trying to redress his role here

Brexit – the movie (2016) a propaganda documentary which was viewed by almost 2 million people in the 6 week period before the referendum

Brexit – a very British coup (2016) was a balanced BBC documentary taking us to Referendum Day  

Brexitannia (2017) is a far more thoughtful film of an almost sociological depth based on about 200 in-depth interviews the length and breadth of the country and including commentaries. It’s reviewed here by Zero Anthropology

"Inside Europe - 10 years of turmoil" (2019) the BBC documentary referred to in the opening

A selection from the Cummings blog -

https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/13/unrecognised-simplicities-of-effective-action-1-expertise-and-a-quadrillion-dollar-business/

https://dominiccummings.com/2014/06/30/my-report-for-business-for-britain-on-the-dynamics-of-the-debate-over-the-eu-and-a-small-but-telling-process-point-on-the-eu/

https://dominiccummings.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/20130825-some-thoughts-on-education-and-political-priorities-version-2-final.pdf