CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION?

I’m encouraged by positive feedback on my last post to venture further into the nature of the continuing confusions about the respective role in UK government of the roles of Ministers, civil servants, parliament, the judiciary and voters.

No less a body than the House of Lords issued a report last month (October) which probably served to further the confusion – with the exciting title “The Appointment and Dismissal of Permanent Secretaries and other Senior Civil Servants”, attracting a useful response from the Constitution Society - with a brief background report from Martin Stanley who runs this excellent site about the civil service

But the most concise answer to the question which heads this post is probably given in the 2019 report from the Constitution Society with the revealing title of “Good Chaps No More”

The ‘good chap’ principle emerged over a long period of time. Its existence was 

assumed rather than expressly defined. As Gladstone put it in 1879, the British 

constitution ‘presumes more boldly than any other the good sense and good faith 

of those who work it.’ What we might regard as the closest equivalent to a formal 

codification of what is expected of a ‘good chap’ came relatively recently in the form 

of the "Seven Principles of Public Life". First issued by the Committee on Standards 

in Public Life in 1995, they are known as the ‘Nolan Principles’, after the inaugural 

chair of the committee, Lord (Michael) Nolan (who served in this post from 1994 to 

1997). These standards supposedly apply to all exercisers of public functions, though 

they have no legal force. The principles, with official explanatory texts, are: 

• 1. Selflessness; Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest. 

• 2. Integrity Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to 

people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work. They should not act or take decisions in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family

• 3. Objectivity; Holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, 

fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias. 

• 4. Accountability Holders of public office are accountable to the public for their 

decisions and actions and must submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure this.

• 5. Openness Holders of public office should act and take decisions in an open 

and transparent manner. Information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for so doing.

• 6. Honesty; Holders of public office should be truthful. 

• 7. Leadership; Holders of public office should exhibit these principles in their 

 own behaviour. They should actively promote and robustly support the principles and be willing to challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs.’ 

The period since the European Union (EU) referendum of June 2016 has seen a series of disputes about whether constitutional abuses have taken place. They have touched upon many of the main governmental organs: the Cabinet, the Civil Service, Parliament, the judiciary, the devolved institutions, and even the monarchy. From being a by-word for tedium the condition of the UK constitution has become a first order question cracking with political electricity. ….To provide a perspective on the extent to which previous assumptions have been challenged, it is worth considering an aforementioned document published in 2011, “The Cabinet Manual - A guide to the laws, conventions and rules on the operation of government”, it provides an account, from the perspective of the executive, of the working of the political system. Like the “Seven Principles of Public Life”, it has no direct legal force. But it provides the fullest account, in an official text, of the overall configuration of the UK constitution. Its opening paragraph states: 

‘The UK is a Parliamentary democracy which has a constitutional sovereign as Head of State; a sovereign Parliament, which is supreme to all other government institutions, consisting of the Sovereign, the House of Commons and the House of Lords; an Executive drawn from and accountable to Parliament; and an independent judiciary.’ 

The manual makes no mention at this point of the role of referendums

In our consideration of the draft manual, we called for some clarification of the role of referendums in the final text, that was not provided, though we did not anticipate the scale of disruption that has come about following the 2016 European referendum - or that such exercises in direct democracy might override the fundamental principles set out in this paragraph. It does not suggest that the monarch, Parliament and courts might be required to facilitate the objectives of an executive claiming to be the vehicle for such a supposedly irresistible expression of popular will. Indeed, the word ‘referendum’ does not occur until page 37 of the manual. It is used a total of six times in the text, once in a footnote relating to suspensions of collective responsibility

None of these applications of the term suggest that referendums could take on an overweening constitutional significance. Yet from the time of the public vote of June 2016 onwards, the UK government – including within it politicians who were ministers at the time the Cabinet Manual was issued in 2011 – maintained that a referendum had indeed upended arrangements as presented in its opening paragraph.20 Nor does the Cabinet Manual touch on the difficulty of reconciling plebiscitary democracy with representative democracy with which Parliament has wrestled for nearly three-and-a-half years. On the basis of this premise, the executive has for more than three years exhibited patterns of behaviour that are troubling and ominous regarding the sustainability of constitutional norms and standards of behaviour in the UK….

The law plays an important part in the maintenance of constitutional norms, as we discuss later in this report. But many of the most fundamental ethical and operational rules applying to the executive do not have full legal force, taking the form of conventions. These types of rules can be amorphous in nature. They rest on precedent, usage and interpretation, and can come into being, change, and disappear without any specific player within the political system intending them to. Conventions rely on those involved in their operation recognising and choosing to abide by them. They may not be written down in any official document; and disagreements may arise about whether they exist at all, their precise nature, and how they apply in a specific case. Increasingly, however, the executive has taken to publishing descriptions of some of the most important conventions to which it is subject. The accounts contained in these texts should not necessarily be regarded as the final word, and may be disputed. But between them they take us as close as is presently possible to a formal account of a number of key features of the UK constitution….

We do not claim that the UK constitution is on the brink of unravelling. A more likely pessimistic scenario is a gradual fraying by stages. This outcome is particularly anxiety-inducing, since it would be hard to recognise and could be more readily accepted as normal. Already, a generation whose conscious experience of politics began mid-way through the present decade may regard ongoing turbulence, a lack of clear principles and flagrant challenges to the system as standard features of politics. This perception is liable to exploitation by those who wish to circumvent the rules, or change them for malign purposes. Even if, over coming months and years, the present difficulties appear to subside, it would be a mistake to assume that there was no threat. We should remember this experience.

Further Reading

• Constitution and Governance in the UK  (the UK in a changing Europe 2022)

• Role and status of PM Office (House of Commons 2021)

• Beyond Brexit – toward a British Constitution Vernan Bogdanor 2019

• https://consoc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Blick-and-Hennessy-Brexit-and-the-Melting-of-the-British-Constitution.pdf 

• Codes of the Constitution  Andrew Blick 2016

UPDATE

Just arrived - an important report https://ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/independent-review-of-governance?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

Does the UK deserve its increasing reputation as a “Failed State”?

I’d no sooner put up the previous post about the internecine slanging matches going on within the UK government amongst scientific and political advisers, civil servants and Ministers than an Open Access book came to my attention with the very apt title of “How did Britain come to this? A Century of systemic failure” by Gwyn Bevan (2023). 

The subtitle is rather unfortunate since it led me to believe that we were in 

for a critique of the sort infamously inflicted in Blunders of Our Governments 

in 2013 which was roundly critiqued by two of the author’s own professional 

colleagues. Matt Flinders was first off the mark – to argue that -   

There can be no doubting that King and Crewe provide 12 “horror stories” to support their argument but, without any meaningful reference points against which to evaluate the frequency or nature of these cases, the reader is left with little more than an entertaining list of policy failures. Put slightly differently, it is difficult to really assess whether modern governments in Britain blunder too often or whether when gauged against the challenges of governing in the twenty-first century that the real surprise might be that governments do not blunder more often. This is a critical point.

This is really a polemic rather than a balanced analysis of British government. The authors may reply with reference to the second chapter’s attempt to focus on “an array of successes” (just 12 pages in length in a book of nearly 500 pages) to deny this argument, but the tone and content of the other 26 chapters leave the reader in no doubt as to the authors’ core argument that modern governments in Britain blunder too often. However, without any way of scientifically underpinning this argument, could it be that this book risks adding an oversimplified layer of veneer to an already dominant antipolitical culture that generally thinks that governments and politicians never do anything else but fail or blunder? The problem with such an interpretation is that it is not actually true.

The realm of fate has to some extent been narrowed through collective social endeavor (i.e., democratic politics, and therefore to some extent by politicians). In the 50 years since Bernard Crick wrote “In Defense of Politics,” there has been a 17% increase in life expectancy worldwide. “The world is a much better place today than it was in 1990 or even in 1970.” The United Nations Human Development Report for 2010 concludes that

“over the past twenty years many people around the world have experienced dramatic improvements in key areas of their lives . . . they are healthier, more educated, wealthier and have more power to appoint and hold their leaders accountable than ever before.”

This report also highlights the clear positive relationship between democratic politics and human development, but King and Crewe provide little flavor of this broader global context.

The insights and arguments offered by scholars including Andrew Gamble (“Politics and Fate”, 2000), Gerry Stoker (“Why Politics Matters”, 2006), and Colin Hay (“Why We Hate Politics”, 2007) would all have added tone and texture and balance in way that intensified the social relevance and reach of the book. Others who would have challenged the general narrative offered by King and Crewe—Natan Sharansky (“The Case for Democracy”, 2007), Peter Riddell (“In Defence of Politicians”, 2011), Danny Oppenheimer and Mike Edwards (“Democracy Despite Itself”, 2012), Stephen Medvic (“In Defense of Politicians”, 2012), and Wendy Whitman Cobb (“Unbroken Government”, 2013) to mention just a few—are equally absent and sorely missed.

It is also true that many of the “blunders”—but not all—will be well known to many readers, as will many of the explanations that King and Crewe offer to explain the frequency of such failings. “Failure in British Government” (David Butler, Tony Travers, and AndrewAdonis) and “Groupthink in Government” (Paul ‘t Hart) — books that deal with specific failures or explanations were both written two decades ago, whereas Gerald Kaufman’s “How to Be a Minister” (first published over three decades ago) provides a magisterial insight into the dangers of departmentalism, reshuffles, and ministerial hyperactivism that King and Crewe offer as explanatory variables. More recent books like Christopher Hood’s “The Blame Game” (2013) or the content of specialist journals like Contingencies and Crisis Management might also have added a clearer sense of the complexities of modern governance.

Bill Jennings supplied a more definitive and comparative riposte in this later review in which he took the trouble to chart the mistakes made by other governments

Bevan’s book was launched last week with this rather uninspiring presentation. But it is worth reading – with its focus very much on the ideology behind neoliberalism and its impact on basic education and health services. And it is well presented – with many charts illustrating the text.

No, Minister!

The whole world knows the “Yes, Minister” series which was shown on BBC from 1980-84 and much appreciated by Margaret Thatcher for the way it showed senior civil servants outfoxing Ministers. For those unfortunate few not familiar with the brilliance of the work, these are The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister in full and these are the entire Yes Prime Minister diaries based on the series which ran from 1986-88

What we didn’t know at the time was that the brilliant creator of the series – Anthony Jay – had based his script on the theories of the “public choice” economists who promulgated the view that all “public servants” were serving….their own interests. In 1980 Jay ran a full confession in the London Review of Books (paywall) some of which I will excerpt below

In other words, the series was laying the ground for the neoliberal doctrine which has led to such cynicism about politics…Despite this, I am a great admirer of Anthony Jay’s work which encompassed some great non-fictions books. “Management and Machiavelli” (1967) enthused me no end (I was battling a traditional bureaucracy at the time) - and he “almost single-handedly resurrected the academic study of that 15^th century genius. Jay followed it up with an equally brilliant book – “Corporation Man” – based on his observations of the BBC…… His talents even extended to tossing off elegant guides to running an effective meetings! Indeed some of my more regular readers will know that I have been known to use his “”Democracy, Bernard, it must be stopped when discussing the workings of the political class. For my money, the article can’t be bettered

Here is Jay’s full confession about the background reading which inspired him to write “Yes Minister”

one that stands out above all the others for candour, authority, and sheer volume of precisely recorded detail - Richard Crossman’s “The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister”, especially volumes one and three which cover the years when he was at the head of two major spending departments, Housing and Health. I am in any case a sucker for diaries, and not just because they so often have a freshness, vividness and authenticity that reflective memoirs so rarely achieve. Above all, I love their lack of hindsight, their record of events as perceived and interpreted at the time. If your interest in history is in why people acted the way they did, then you need to know, not what the facts were, but what they believed them to be, and this wonderful fallibility is at the heart of a good diary’s appeal.

I am bound to admit to some personal moral ambivalence about the publication of the Crossman diaries. I have absorbed enough of the Establishment ethic and bureaucratic tradition to see how difficult government would be if you suspected that all your colleagues were busy noting down every informal discussion and chance remark for publication in a few years’ time: it could inhibit free debate and honest opinion in a very damaging way. But in the other scale I have to weigh the public service of bringing out into the open so many facets of that all-important relationship between an elected minister and the permanent officials of his department. George Moseley’s advice on how correspondence could be transferred unread from the out-tray to the in-tray is of course famous, - as is Crossman’s early battle with Evelyn Sharpe over the separation of land planning from housing, but there are many other fascinating revelations all the way through:

• the deliberate fixing of meetings at awkward times,

• the suppression of embarrassing reports by officials,

• the official bluff of saying some person or organisation will object when in fact they do not object at all,

• the freezing out of non-departmental advisers,

• the alteration of agreements when writing minutes and reports so as to bring them closer to what the officials wanted

Those 2,300 pages were an invaluable source for Johnny and me as we wrote the successive episodes of “Yes, Minister” – indeed we return to them again and again for refreshment and renewal but they brought us an additional benefit too: the simple fact that they had been published made all sorts of other people willing to give us, in confidence, a great deal of information that otherwise they might have kept to themselves. One of our small sorrows has been how much of this accurate information, carefully researched, is simply not believed by the general television public.

There was, of course, an imbalance in out sources of information: almost all the published information comes from politicians and not civil servants. A spectacular exception was Leslie Chapman’s “Your Disobedient Servant”, but even though it is one of the best documented and most revealing studies of British bureaucracy ever published, it can hardly be said to redress the balance. We sought to do so by private conversations with civil servants, but they were as you would expect – models of loyalty and discretion. Political journalists and former civil servants were a great deal more helpful, and we hope that with their help we managed to avoid making the minister into too much of a paragon or martyr. But there is a crying need for “The Diaries of a Permanent Secretary” to set alongside the Crossman epic, and if any present Permanent Secretary is reading this I can assure him of two immediate purchasers if his record of events contains anything like the same sort of detailed account and critical judgment of Cabinet Ministers that Crossman’s diaries give of civil servants. I have to admit, however, that I think it extremely unlikely that any present or future Permanent Secretary will ever publish such an account: tradition, nature and even etymology conspire to suggest that it will remain a permanent secret.

We may yet not have such a book but we do have What does Jeremy Think? Jeremy Heywood and the making of modern Britain from the widow of a Permanent Sec - Suzanne Heywood (2021). And for a good short piece on the power of a Prime Minister, I give you The Power of the Prime Minister (The Constitution Society 2016)

Further Reading; Machiavelliana – the living Machiavelli in modern mythologies Jackon and Grace 2018

The official UK Inquiry about COVID

I have a passing interest in political institutions – having graduated in political “science”, with a subsequent Masters in Policy Analysis and spending the last 20 years of my life before retirement helping ex-communist countries develop the capacity of their state institutions. So I have followed with particular interest the different ways in which governments handled the COVID19 crisis - and what that seemed to reveal about their political systems.

As far as I am aware, the British government is the only one now carrying out an official inquiry. It started last July with an investigation of the preparedness for the pandemic (module 1) and is scheduled to last for several years. It started module 2 in September looking at issues of “decision-making and public governance”. This past week brought it a high profile with some of the key civil service, scientific and policy advisers under scrutiny. This is how one of the UK’s best political scientists covered the process

The COVID inquiry is possibly the most sophisticated and wide-ranging blame 

game that has ever played out in British politics. That said, the great benefit of 

public inquiries, as opposed to parliamentary scrutiny, is that their breadth allows 

for an exploration of issues in a way that promotes “cool thinking” (balanced, 

reflective, evidence-based) over “hot rhetoric” (aggressive, adversarial, emotive).
Although hotly awaited, Dominic Cummings’s appearance before the inquiry was a 

fairly cool affair. Gone was the “mad man in the wings” who had caused controversy 

and chaos in Whitehall as chief adviser to former prime minister Boris Johnson. 

The edgy and unrepentant dissident who sat in the garden of No.10 and sought to 

justify his lockdown-breaking drive to Barnard Castle replaced now by a far calmer 

character.
There were, of course, the juicy soundbites about poor planning (the Cabinet Office 

described as a “dumpster fire”) and even poorer leadership (Johnson apparently being 

“obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with 

life”). The scale of dysfunctionality was captured in the use of a new language of 

disarray and disorder. Johnson, for example, was known as “trolley” due to his tendency 

to change direction. Shifts in policy were the result of “poppins” (moments when 

officials would “pop in” to see Boris Johnson to drip-feed thoughts of doubt into his 

mind).

Deep story
None of this insight was new, of course. The fact that the pandemic became a “Kafkaesque 

nightmare”, as Cummings put it, was no revelation to those who had been following 

this sorry saga. But a deeper story did emerge in the course of Cummings’s evidence.
In sociological research the notion of a “deep story” – as sociologist Arlie Hochschild 

has demonstrated with such insight – focuses on how people make sense of the world.

 Deep stories don’t need to be completely accurate, but they have to feel true to those 

who tell them. They are the stories people tell themselves to capture and manage 

pressures and disappointments, fears and anxieties.
In the COVID context, what’s most significant is the way in which a trail of WhatsApps 

and other social media messages have laid bare the “deep story” of how officials and 

advisers felt about their political masters. Expletive-laden messages between senior 

officials, the government described as a “terrible, tragic joke” and even the admission 

by the country’s most senior civil servant that he was “not sure I can cope”.
What these inquiry sessions with central political figures have really revealed was 

the frailty of human nature when expected to govern under pressure – which in itself 

leads to a focus on expertise.

The deeper issue, if not the story, emerging out of Cummings’s evidence 

was the existence of a governing system that was almost completely devoid 

of expertise. Plans did not exist. Systems were not connected. Data was 

not collected. Admissions of “dysfunctionality” little more than a veil for 

an incredibly amateurish system staffed by generalists who were committed 

to “muddling through” when systemic responses were needed.

Where expertise was available in the form of its Scientific Advisory Group for 

Emergencies, the government lacked the capacity to understand or interrogate 

the advice it was given.
The bigger picture is provided in former government minister Rory Stewart’s book 

Politics on the Edge, which charts in great detail how those with expertise and 

specialist knowledge within Whitehall are sidelined in terms of promotion and policy 

input. Journalist Ian Dunt makes a similar argument in his critique of both ministers 

and the civil service – generalists jettisoned into a system based on non-stop churn.

Shallow man
And yet there is a dimension of this story that is not at all deep. Indeed, its shallowness 

is almost shocking. The core and undeniable concern that Cummings’s evidence reinforced 

relates to the issue of leadership.
The admission by Lee Cain, the former director of communications in No.10 under 

Johnson, that COVID “was the wrong crisis for this prime minister’s skillset” 

demands deconstruction.
How did Johnson become prime minister, and what were the skills or attributes that 

he brought to the role?
This is not a partisan question. It is a proposal for sober reflection on how we give 

people power.

Arguably the most galling element of the evidence that the public inquiry 

is amassing about Johnson’s lack of leadership skills is that anyone who 

had done even the smallest amount of credible research on his personal 

and professional life up to July 2019 could only have concluded that he 

was totally unfit for office.
This is not a partisan point either. It is underscored by a vast seam of 

research and scholarship. Anyone who doubts this point might simply take 

a dip into Tom Bower’s biography which titles Johnson as The Gambler. 

Andrew Gimson’s account of his “rise and fall” provides another weighty 

account of chaos and disaster. Sonia Purnell’s Just Boris: A Tale of Blond 

Ambition outlines a life of entitlement and absurdity.

The deepest question unearthed by Cummings’s evidence is really one about how we 

select and support our political leaders. In Johnson’s case it’s worth remembering 

that he was elected and effectively anointed prime minister by Conservative party 

members, who constitute less than 1% of the electorate in the United Kingdom (and 

a skewed and unrepresentative slice of the public at that).
Party activists tend to be more extreme in their views than the general public, and 

are likely to prize certain “qualities” (such as celebrity status, charisma and charm) 

over “basic skills” (organisational expertise or project management experience).
Celebrity, charisma and charm might be appropriate qualities for tea parties and 

fundraising dinners but they’re not much good for leading integrated pandemic 

response strategies. That’s the deep and simple story.

Further Reading/Viewing

• uk Covid19 inquiry live stream Cummings – starts from 02.00 hrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLX37aNgUzk&ab_channel=UKCovid-19Inquiry

• 115 pages of Cummings’ formal evidence to the official inquiry

• Institute of Government Blog about the Inquiry

My World View?

The last post conveyed the World View (WV) I had developed by 2014 – but warned that I was becoming more radical in my old age. Almost a decade later,  this is a better (and more detailed) outline of my WV. The “mixed economy” which existed from 1950-1990 was a healthy and effective system for us in the West

• It worked because power was diffused. Each type of power – economic 

(companies/banks etc), political (citizens and workers) and legal/admin/military 

(the state) – balanced the other. None was dominant.

• Deindustrialisation and economic globalisation have undermined the power 

which working class people were able to exercise in that period through votes and union activity

• Privatisation has been a disaster – inflicting costs on the public and transferring 

wealth to the few

• Neo-liberalism has supplied a thought system which justifies corporate greed 

and the privileging (through tax breaks and favourable legislation) of the large 

international company

• All political parties and most media have been captured by that thought 

system which now rules the world

• People have, as a result, become cynical and apathetic

• Two elements of the “balanced system” (Political and legal power) are therefore 

now supine before the third (corporate and media power). The balance is broken 

and the dominant power ruthless in its exploitation of its new freedom

It is very difficult to see a “countervailing power” which would make 

these corporate elites pull back from the disasters they are inflicting on us

• Social protest is marginalised

• Not least by the combination of the media and an Orwellian “security state” 

ready to act against “dissidence”

• But the beliefs which lie at the dark heart of the neo-liberal project do 

need more detailed exposure

• as well as its continued efforts to undermine what little is left of state power

• We need to be willing to express more vehemently the arguments against 

privatisation - existing and proposed

• to feel less ashamed about arguing for “the commons” and for things like 

cooperatives and social enterprise (inasmuch as such endeavours are allowed)

In summer 2021 – with the Covid pandemic still raging – I made an attempt 

to update that statement by adding that we have  consistently underestimated the significance of global warming and what is now called the anthropogenic era – indeed there is now open talk of “facing extinction”

• Globalisation is in shreds

• Societies are polarised

• Thrust into narrow and selfish “bubbles”

• Artificial intelligence threatens what we used to refer to as “employment 

prospects”

How, in such conditions, might social forces come together with a programme 

which stands a good chance of reforming the political and state systems of power 

- so that the wings of corporate power can be properly clipped??
And make no mistake – power is the central issue here. At the heart of our 

collective malaise is the imbalance of power. We quantify everything these days 

– talking for example of the 8 men who control half the planet’s wealth. But 

somehow this fails to galvanise any sort of collective action – reference to 

gini-coefficients leaves glazed eyes. The  manifestos of political parties are 

characterised by total irrelevance. Totally missing are the commitments to 

change the power structure eg

• Break up monopolies

• Tax the rich – who currently hide in tax havens

• Reinstate media balance (including a requirement for interviewees to 

reveal their sources of income)

• Develop Citizen juries

• Stop money talking

• Ensure that civil service advice is neutral

And why are such commitments missing? Because those in charge of political 

parties know they would then be the subject of highly aggressive attacks by 

journalists and academics in the pay of corporate power. We can no longer rely 

on political parties to be agents of change - we seem to be on our own
I’ve been trying to gather together some key books to skim for my conclusion 

and felt that Jeremy Gilbert’s Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in 

an age of individualism (2013) was one of the important texts whose very title 

recognises the basic problem we face.

BOOKS WHICH FORM A WORLD VIEW

One of the most thoughful and well-read bloggers is Aurelien whose latest post is an annotated list of the books which have helped him develop his particular world view which, sadly, he makes no attempt to describe. But it’s clear that he’s a bit of a contrarian – rubbishing mainstream literature and clearly enjoying, as I do, the writings of people such as Richard Evans and EP Thompson whose 1978 “The Poverty of Theory and other Essays” I downloaded as a result of the mention. I would strongly recommend reading Aurelien’s post in full - its book references reflect a life of reading and are quite fascinating.

I recently posted about my response to a challenge thrown down by the Cultural Tutor to identify the book which everyone should read. That, of course, is not quite the same as listing the books which helped form your world view. But for what it’s worth, these are the books I mentioned for the challenge -

It’s not surprising that the books I remember are from the early 1960s – for example EH Carr was a favourite, not just his “Twenty Years’ Crisis” (1946) which introduced me to Realism but What is History? EH Carr (1961) which I vividly remember for its story of how you caught fish (facts) depended on the type of reel you used and the spot you chose to fish at.

Peter Berger was another writer who made an impact – first for his prescient postmodern analysis in The Socal construction of Reality P Berger and T Luckman (1966) and then Pyramids of Sacrifice – political ethics and social change (1975)

More recently, writers such as Francis Fukuyama, David Graeber, Michael Greer, Roman Krznaric, Kate Rawarth, Wolfgang Streeck and Yanis Varoufakis have also impressed . One book, however, stands out for the variety of explanations it offers for the difficulties we have in agreeing and acting on global warming – viz Why We Disagree about Climate Change by Mike Hulme (2009). But, at the end of the day, I tend to fall back on Bertrand Russell whose Sceptical essays still delight although published in 1925

Aurelien’s post has spurred me to do three things

• to try to describe my own world view

• to identify the books which helped form that

• to see whether I could list some books which challenged that world view 

My World View (WV)
My WV is not static – I have become more radical in my old age. In my youth, 

I was powerfully influenced by the likes of Karl Popper and Tony Crosland. 

My initial experience of municipal government made the tactics of Saul Alinsky 

attractive but then I became more of a liberal technocrat. The new millennium 

saw the scales drop from my eyes and this is how I described the situation in 

2014.

Political parties are a bust flush - All mainstream political parties in Europe have been affected by the neo-liberal virus and can no longer represent the concerns of ordinary people. And those “alternative parties” which survive the various hurdles placed in their way by the electoral process rarely survive.
The German Greens were an inspiration until they too eventually fell prey to the weaknesses of political parties identified a hundred years ago by Robert Michels.
More recently, “Pirate” parties in Scandinavia and Bepe Grillo’s Italian Five Star Movement have managed, briefly, to capture public attention, occupy parliamentary benches but then sink to oblivion or fringe if not freak interest.
What the media call “populist” parties of various sorts attract bursts of electoral support in most countries but are led by labile individuals preying on public fears and prejudices and incapable of the sort of cooperative effort which serious change requires.

NGOs are no match for corporate power - The annual World Social Forum has had more staying power than the various “Occupy movements” but its very diversity means that nothing coherent emerges to challenge the power elite whose “scriptures” are delivered from the pulpits of The World Bank and the OECD There doesn’t even seem a common word to describe our condition and a vision for a better future – “social change”? What’s that when it’s at home?

Academics are careerists – although the groves of academia are still sanctuary 

for a few brave voices who speak out against the careless transfer by governments 
of hundreds of billions of dollars to corporate interests …

• Noam Chomsky and David Harvey are prominent examples. 

• Henry Mintzberg, one of the great management gurus, has in the last decade broken 

ranks and now writes about the need for a profound “rebalancing” of the power structure 

- Rebalancing Society – radical renewal beyond left, right and centre. 

• Economists who challenge the conventional wisdom of that discipline are now able 

to use the Real-World Economics blog.

• Daniel Dorling is a geographer who focuses on inequalities eg his powerful 

Injustice – why social inequality persists.

Think Tanks play safe – and….think - although there are honourable exceptions such as -

• Susan George, a European activist and writer, who operates from the

 Trans National Institute(TNI)  and, amongst her many books, has produced two 

marvellous satires – Lugano I and Lugano II

• David Korton’s books and Yes Magazine keep up a steady critique.

• Joseph Stiglitz, once part of the World Bank elite, writes scathingly about 

economic conventional wisdom.

• The Pope has the resources of the Vatican behind him; and is proving a great 

example in the struggle for dignity and against privilege.

TOO MUCH CHANGE

Devastated to learn today that my favourite weekly journal – ScottishReview – is winding up. Its articles have been short and powerful – representing the best of Scottish writing. And its eloquence can be tasted in the twelve compendia it has issued since it started life in 1995 – a few years after I had left its shores.

Please dip in to see what you’ve missed!