Douglas Carswell's Blog

Mr Bold has left the building

Steve Hilton, the Prime Minister's right hand man at Number 10, is off to California.

So what, you might ask? Isn't he just another of those Westminster insiders? Why should anyone outside care?

Westminster watchers often dismiss Hilton, a former advertising executive, as just a PR man. But they have it 100 percent wrong. Hilton grasped something profound. He came to see what is wrong with our politics in a way that few politicians have been able to.

Hilton can see that in many ways it no longer really matters who you vote for. Most of the key decisions that affect our lives are taken by remote officials. Public officials, Hilton realised, are no longer properly accountable to the rest of us.

Government does not answer to Parliament, nor Parliament to the people. The political future, Hilton has recognised, belongs to whoever is prepared to change this.

He backed plans to allow local people to elect top cops. He proposed taking power from Whitehall and giving it to town halls.

After the MPs expenses scandal, he put forward ideas to make MPs answer to the voters they are supposed to serve. Public services, he suggested, should serve the public, not government, interest.

Often mocked for it, Steve sees how the internet revolution will change how government works.

An earlier generation of Tory thinkers, the Thatcherites, could see how we needed to transform the economy. New Tory thinkers understand how we must transform the way we run politics and public services.

Hilton's move to America might not tell us what will now happen under this current government. But it does tell us what won't. When Steve cycles away from Downing Street, the chances of bold, radical change peddle off too.

When Ted Heath entered office in the early 1970s, he promised the so-called Selsdon agenda. The Cameroons offered the Hilton agenda. But in both cases, the radicalism has been blunted, worn down by the Whitehall machine.

Hilton will, we are told, be back in a year.  Let's hope so. 

Hilton's departure is a victory for business-as-usual in government. The urgency to do things differently will leave with him. The cosy civil service clique can return to their power point presentations and relax.

This may, I fear, turn out to be just another government after all.

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