Douglas Carswell's Blog

Where did all the radicalism go?

The day David Cameron walked into Downing Street as Prime Minister last May, one image in particular stuck in my mind.  As he stepped through the threshold of Number 10, the Prime Minister was greeted by Sir Gus O’Donnell, head of the Civil Service.

Who, I wondered, was welcoming who? Was the head of the Whitehall machine presenting himself to the democratically elected leader of the country? Or was the democratically elected leader of the country reporting for duty to the Whitehall machine?

Today, Tim Montgomerie and James Forsyth have articles in the Sunday papers suggesting that the once radical agenda of the Coalition has been diluted by the Whitehall machine. 

Bold initiatives have got bogged down. The desire to do things differently has all too often given way to the default approach. Highly paid inertia, combined with vested interests, have worn down whatever political will there is for change. For all the rhetoric of reform, too often ministers have ended up justifying the departmental policy they inherited.

From the Treasury to DfID, from the Ministry of Defence to BIS, perhaps what is most striking about this government is not its radicalism, but rather the continuity with what went before.  Perhaps this is what it felt like in the 70s, when the boldness of Selsdon gave way to business-as-usual?  

What makes this reversion to managerialism all the more depressing is that, even before the last election, it was pretty clear that the Whitehall machine was going to be the biggest road block to reform.  The most casual observer of the Blair years could see that the Coalition’s main opponents would not be Labour ex-ministers, but Whitehall. 

Perhaps it is not too late to do as Paul Richards, one-time special adviser to the previous administration, has suggested, and “make senior civil servants, from Grade 3 and above, directly accountable to his ministers, appointed by the government, and subject to pre-appointment scrutiny as in the United States."  If Sir Gus and co had to annually plead for their departmental budgets from Commons committees, they might be a little faster on their feet in delivering the changes that the people voted for.

Until then, the managerialists will always hold the advantage over the reformers. 

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