The PM destroyed his own grip of Whitehall/Treasury & accidentally provoked discussions about the assembly of his own firing squad...Why the government does not control the government...
Suggest you read the Audit of War, you don’t need to go back to the WW1 to see the same old lack of skills and knowledge being ‘applied’ in the British State.
What I found fascinating about Audit of War was how farsighted the civil servants then were - they could see what the challenges and solutions were, and described them - what the next 50 years held for Britain - but politicians couldn’t do what was needed. We were very effective in rebuilding west Germany, rubbish at sorting ourselves out.
But the CS of that time were genuine mandarins, expert in specific fields and rich in the experience of many years, especially in the diplomatic service - see Rennell Rodd. Today's are not cut from the same cloth and are shuffled around like playing cards with obvious consequences. Those CS could see 50 years ahead because they had the depth of historical and contextual knowledge which made comparative analysis possible.
Now this often resides in the ‘juniors’ who often are dismissed because the CS is so obsessed with grade. You can’t even be interviewed by someone unless they’re at least a grade higher.
The heavy emphasis on classical western literature in the educations of such men is a sign of its utility in geopolitical applications. Contrast to the political science majors and MBAs of today...
MBAs are pretty worthless. And I’m one. Teach you little of real substance (like most ‘education’). Designed for corporate speak snd analysis. Do no go deeper, like most education as we call it
It is a tremendous disservice that so many children are funnelled into university where they are taught nothing of any utility at all. And that they pay so much for the privilege. I cannot help but think that reducing university attendance to 5% of the school leaving population would be a net positive, provided minimum wage laws are abolished to enable informal apprenticeships at a variety of trades and professions.
Well this is what my generation had. I’m not sure what good it did frankly other than to turn out semi educated elite into corporates and government. Surely we need a far more sophisticated way of looking at ‘education’ beyond the dichotomy of ‘university versus the rest’. Unless we can decide what we need and want from our future workforce and what we can afford, as well as what we can encourage from a human potential point of view (barristers, poets and all), we seem stuck in that old binary view of humanity. The able and the less able, to our detriment because we’re too thick to see otherwise
Is it not the case that all government(s) get hooked on media like a teenager can be on drugs because of absence of code of conduct or transparent regulation. Media are businesses like lobbyists and if one can be regulated why not the other? Electorate elect our representatives to deal with our grievances and one of those grievances is this delusional obsession with newspapers which nobody really reads anymore.
Frankly, most are too dumb to do anything but play to the media. Selection procedures are a popularity contest - an ability to blow smoke up people's backsides is a good starting point. Then, a willingness to be a leaflet dropper (straight out of the Conservative Central Office media dept) for 6 weeks of your life is the single most important qualification of a politician. God forbid you should have a proper job that precludes postal delivery in the run up to an election. Being male with sharp elbows is obviously up there. Availability IS a skill set. Before you ask, yes, I'm cynical. I've been there. Done it. Never again.
A) I've noticed that across your posts you group Brown, Cameron and May. Is this reflective of an admiration for (some aspects of) Blair? Would be interested in reading your thoughts, as TB/AC clearly more effective/serious in terms than the others mentioned above and their lackeys.
B) relatedly, a notable absent from your references to highly effective political actors are the subjects of Caro's books (Moses, LBJ). I would imagine that, like Blair, you would disagree with both on merit of policies pursued. Do you disagree with their methods re management/ops too?
I think today is the day I finally understand, after reading this latest post...but I feel quite hopeless about the future of politics. We've all heard of the Oxford and Cambridge 'mafias' - people well connected, educated and all come in at the same time as they are seen as 'born to rule'. The establishment of some kind of alternative philosophy, radicalism (as detailed by Dom) is a step in the right direction. However, with the current climate, is there anyone hard enough to take this on?
Finally if our ministers have same background as those in 1914 (a slight exaggeration), then the problem surely starts with how universities select. More selection on potential needed as well as risk taking would lead to wider available candidates for Parliament and ministerial office l
Quite right! The system is designed to protect itself - to weed out what it sees as mavericks, grit in the oyster - even if they have an Oxbridge background!
This is how all institutions work, inevitably - they start to choose people who “fit”, who are like the people already inside and running the show. So only wars, revolutions and other crises are able to turn them upside down and shake out all the dross that accumulates over time. Brexit might have done it, DC clearly hoped it would, don’t think Covid is going to do the job. I think that leaves war or revolution
They being universities, specifically the staff tasked with selection. The garbage comes from memes and stories about culture, history, what it means to be virtuous etc etc originated and propogated by academics at said universities and now at large in the wider world of govt, media, industry etc. via graduates of this system.
Andrew - how do these academics come to be so biased and why are many so unable to espouse many values and ideas snd be detached? Where is the baseline ignominy?
I believe it is because they value other things over truth. Most commonly they value social acceptance - being seen to be a 'nice' person. To a lesser degree possibly money.
To stand against these things and stand up for truth as an academic takes extraordinary courage. Some are doing that and I take my hat off to them. Sadly most are not which is kinda like having soldiers who run away from the war. You can kinda sympathise but on the other hand it is their job to face these perils.
So Andrew I say again. Why should they believe their duty is to be nice and why should they ‘face perils’ by being simply agnostic which is the job of an academic after all. Where do these notions come from?
Look into the Frankfurt School. Cultural marxism started there. It was a deliberate plan to infest the academies and indoctrinate the youth. Flawless victory.
Since most every (hard to think of exceptions) political system has performed badly in the face of Covid, it is difficult to pin the plane on the peculiarities of SW1.
But such a different country. The sooner we get away from the obsession with ‘best practice’ which usually takes no account of context, and think for ourselves, the better
Stafford Beer, Cybersyn and Chile seem to offer powerful evidence against the effectiveness of direct injection of 'obviously sensible' uses of systems thinking in government. I am not sure your blogs address this, or if they do it is along the benevolent dicator (LKY) model. For many of us this is more frightening than bumbling leaders.
"we who want regime change...must develop a plan to take power away from these parties and bureaucracies and give it to others…" Jesus Christ Dom. So, not sinister at all then. What could possibly go wrong? You said previously that the only person with the power to change the system is the PM with the current incumbent being neither interested nor capable. So just work to get someone better into power, who genuinely cares about this stuff, with good people around them. And given the importance of incentives, also focus relentlessly on finding ways to change the incentives. Either strategy will re-shape the system from within. Look forward to the discussion on how to influence the system positively rather than smashing it like a cackling despot.
Democracy in the UK has always been a polite fiction, hence an increasingly educated/aware population have decreasing faith in it. Johnson's administration have done us one (back-handed) favour by pulling the scales from our eyes and overtly announcing the hollowness, and fragility of our system, and its dependence on "good chaps who play by the rules". Once you have an administration which play by different rules, the essentially agreed nature of the UK constitution is revealed in all its weakness.
Hey ho. This feels like Groundhog Day. We know that politicians, the civil service and even business people have limited thinking. It’s not that they’re not ‘clever’. I’m sure they’re clever in the terms that schools and their compatriots think of them. But they’re so often linear, trapped in codified thinking without that intuition, that willingness to combine ‘evidence’ with a leap of insight, a desire to listen to ‘outliers’ because they’re not senior enough, so what do they know, they’re not ‘established’ or academically laureled enough, so are too risky etc etc. Cannot ‘hear’. In my view this yet again comes down to education to at least some extent. If children of all backgrounds, classes and so called ‘IQ’ are asked to integrate ideas from all sorts of sources, often appearing unrelated, but are nevertheless part of a great pattern of ideas, which the really clever can synthesise and turn into themes which startle and influence and the same (or others),who really know how to get people engaged and willing to act, then this same treadmill continues. Just marginal improvements on what we already have. This in my view is true in politics, business, medicine…. Adopting ‘defensive practices’
Agreed. Every institution, no matter how fast-paced at first, becomes defensive. First, defensive of its work/profit. Then, defensive of what it calls its values. Then, defensive of its processes. Then defensive simply of its existence. The private sector (or at least the parts of it I've worked in, usually US-dominated) is no better than the public sector. Perhaps we should take a lesson from the Victorians, who were very good at creating new things whilst making everyone believe they were existing things. Difficult in today's media/tech world, but possibly the one time client journalism might actually have some benefit?
DC the man who followed the wrong science on covid and plunged the uk into a lemming covid strategy based on Neil Furguson's predictions of catastrophe.
Can't wait to see the solution for the politically driven "democratic" systems
Zzzzzzzz
This has to be the most stupid time in human history
Trying to reinvent the wheel and avoid solutions
The basis of freedom is economic opportunity not prattling on about the current political comedy
Starmer has probably done enough to demonstrate he’s put momentum/Corbyn behind him, and moved to the center. He’s boring as f**k, but I guess he’s won some supporters in the domestic establishment and some powerful support from outside the UK.
Sunak is the conservative poster boy shoo in, carefully curated, and only wheeled out into public view for good news, and protected from everything else. But he looks so frail from his PR isolation, that the public will be concerned that he’s all image, and no substance, and might start crying at the first bit of trouble he has to deal with, although they guess he won’t be dealing with it anyway
So can the UK establishment avoid falling under the influence of any one particular external power, EU, China, USA… (although the EU looks like it’s under pressure again to break up).
The UK public have borne the cost of the UK being the first to show how to exit the EU, and those particular costs won’t be over yet a while.
Piled on top of that, the UK public have also borne the UK covid crash course structural reset of the UK economy, ready for a Phoenix like revival from the ashes… some time soon they say… but that particular story won’t be over yet a while either.
We’ll sustain this course against the headwinds for as long as the public are willing to put up with it… and that’s a long long while too.
The west is burning out the dead structural wood quickly, and painfully, most painfully for the UK of all… because we left it so late to change course… even austerity since 2008 couldn’t get us close enough to the end goal, to avoid such severe pain.
Few of my independent business competitors remain, they have all been gobbled up cheap, by investment firms over the last 18 months, and that process won’t be over yet a while either.
Anyway, the UK’s largest problem is longevity… healthcare should be for preventing needless suffering, and not extending physical life for the sake of it, as there is little we can currently do about the brain, which is pretty much past it for the overwhelming majority, by their late 50’s.
Anyway… we’ve been put on some global restructuring and recovery plan… and the elderly establishment elites running the plan within the UK will be primarily looking after themselves.
In my opinion change only comes about from a shock that transforms or a gradual realisation that things are bad and discomfort snd pain enough to want something different. Where are we on either on these ‘change curves’. Are we on either in the eyes of the public? If not how could they be generated? And should they be?
Arguably, those changes were observed in the UK historically: 1906, 1931, 1945, 1979. Radical course changes. The issue today is a 19th century constitution/mechanism of govt not keeping up with multiple changes in other areas which they previously governed, eg tech/media/public trust/UK position in global system.
I was thinking more in terms of UK General Elections. 1906 Liberal landslide enabled them to construct earliest iteration of welfare state. 1931 split Labour, kept them out of power for a generation, and ushered in long period of "coalition" govt with no real opposition. 1945 and 1979 are more obvious, though arguably 1983 GE landslide enabled Thatcher to proceed more quickly than in her first term. However, these were all revolutionary changes of governing ethos, but not really seismic changes to the system/machinery of govt overall.
Well done Dominic for having the balls and the interest to engage those Scots down the local. Really talking to people face to face creates trust, even if they don’t end up agreeing with you. We could do with a lot more of this from our politicians.
Guerilla teams armed against the unwary won in Afghanistan. Not sophisticated and centralised ‘new models’, imposed on people, some of whom subscribed, some did not not understand, not warfare values from the west. Just a real understanding of the people they were dealing with at a regional and tribal level, a desire to win above all else and primitive weapons. A ghastly, cruel but salutary lesson on the nature of ‘change’
Today's disclosures tell a different story - that the West literally shot itself in the foot i.e. whatever else had happened, the current abhorrent situation is down to sheer and massive incompetence/incontinence at leadership levels.
Suggest you read the Audit of War, you don’t need to go back to the WW1 to see the same old lack of skills and knowledge being ‘applied’ in the British State.
What I found fascinating about Audit of War was how farsighted the civil servants then were - they could see what the challenges and solutions were, and described them - what the next 50 years held for Britain - but politicians couldn’t do what was needed. We were very effective in rebuilding west Germany, rubbish at sorting ourselves out.
But the CS of that time were genuine mandarins, expert in specific fields and rich in the experience of many years, especially in the diplomatic service - see Rennell Rodd. Today's are not cut from the same cloth and are shuffled around like playing cards with obvious consequences. Those CS could see 50 years ahead because they had the depth of historical and contextual knowledge which made comparative analysis possible.
Now this often resides in the ‘juniors’ who often are dismissed because the CS is so obsessed with grade. You can’t even be interviewed by someone unless they’re at least a grade higher.
The heavy emphasis on classical western literature in the educations of such men is a sign of its utility in geopolitical applications. Contrast to the political science majors and MBAs of today...
MBAs are pretty worthless. And I’m one. Teach you little of real substance (like most ‘education’). Designed for corporate speak snd analysis. Do no go deeper, like most education as we call it
It is a tremendous disservice that so many children are funnelled into university where they are taught nothing of any utility at all. And that they pay so much for the privilege. I cannot help but think that reducing university attendance to 5% of the school leaving population would be a net positive, provided minimum wage laws are abolished to enable informal apprenticeships at a variety of trades and professions.
Well this is what my generation had. I’m not sure what good it did frankly other than to turn out semi educated elite into corporates and government. Surely we need a far more sophisticated way of looking at ‘education’ beyond the dichotomy of ‘university versus the rest’. Unless we can decide what we need and want from our future workforce and what we can afford, as well as what we can encourage from a human potential point of view (barristers, poets and all), we seem stuck in that old binary view of humanity. The able and the less able, to our detriment because we’re too thick to see otherwise
Is it not the case that all government(s) get hooked on media like a teenager can be on drugs because of absence of code of conduct or transparent regulation. Media are businesses like lobbyists and if one can be regulated why not the other? Electorate elect our representatives to deal with our grievances and one of those grievances is this delusional obsession with newspapers which nobody really reads anymore.
Frankly, most are too dumb to do anything but play to the media. Selection procedures are a popularity contest - an ability to blow smoke up people's backsides is a good starting point. Then, a willingness to be a leaflet dropper (straight out of the Conservative Central Office media dept) for 6 weeks of your life is the single most important qualification of a politician. God forbid you should have a proper job that precludes postal delivery in the run up to an election. Being male with sharp elbows is obviously up there. Availability IS a skill set. Before you ask, yes, I'm cynical. I've been there. Done it. Never again.
Two things Dom...
A) I've noticed that across your posts you group Brown, Cameron and May. Is this reflective of an admiration for (some aspects of) Blair? Would be interested in reading your thoughts, as TB/AC clearly more effective/serious in terms than the others mentioned above and their lackeys.
B) relatedly, a notable absent from your references to highly effective political actors are the subjects of Caro's books (Moses, LBJ). I would imagine that, like Blair, you would disagree with both on merit of policies pursued. Do you disagree with their methods re management/ops too?
I think today is the day I finally understand, after reading this latest post...but I feel quite hopeless about the future of politics. We've all heard of the Oxford and Cambridge 'mafias' - people well connected, educated and all come in at the same time as they are seen as 'born to rule'. The establishment of some kind of alternative philosophy, radicalism (as detailed by Dom) is a step in the right direction. However, with the current climate, is there anyone hard enough to take this on?
You can't get close enough if you don't have what they want (cf what they need).
Finally if our ministers have same background as those in 1914 (a slight exaggeration), then the problem surely starts with how universities select. More selection on potential needed as well as risk taking would lead to wider available candidates for Parliament and ministerial office l
It's not how they select, it's the garbage they put into people's heads and the groupthink nature of that garbage.
Quite right! The system is designed to protect itself - to weed out what it sees as mavericks, grit in the oyster - even if they have an Oxbridge background!
This is how all institutions work, inevitably - they start to choose people who “fit”, who are like the people already inside and running the show. So only wars, revolutions and other crises are able to turn them upside down and shake out all the dross that accumulates over time. Brexit might have done it, DC clearly hoped it would, don’t think Covid is going to do the job. I think that leaves war or revolution
Who are the ‘they’ and where does the ‘garbage’ come from and get eulogised? Then we might get a glimmer of insight
They being universities, specifically the staff tasked with selection. The garbage comes from memes and stories about culture, history, what it means to be virtuous etc etc originated and propogated by academics at said universities and now at large in the wider world of govt, media, industry etc. via graduates of this system.
Andrew - how do these academics come to be so biased and why are many so unable to espouse many values and ideas snd be detached? Where is the baseline ignominy?
I believe it is because they value other things over truth. Most commonly they value social acceptance - being seen to be a 'nice' person. To a lesser degree possibly money.
To stand against these things and stand up for truth as an academic takes extraordinary courage. Some are doing that and I take my hat off to them. Sadly most are not which is kinda like having soldiers who run away from the war. You can kinda sympathise but on the other hand it is their job to face these perils.
So Andrew I say again. Why should they believe their duty is to be nice and why should they ‘face perils’ by being simply agnostic which is the job of an academic after all. Where do these notions come from?
Look into the Frankfurt School. Cultural marxism started there. It was a deliberate plan to infest the academies and indoctrinate the youth. Flawless victory.
You may be right. Either way we’re stuck in a very rigid paradigm it seems
Since most every (hard to think of exceptions) political system has performed badly in the face of Covid, it is difficult to pin the plane on the peculiarities of SW1.
“pin the blame”
Sweden has performed differently. Their govt popularity is high.
But such a different country. The sooner we get away from the obsession with ‘best practice’ which usually takes no account of context, and think for ourselves, the better
So-called 'Best Practice' is usually anything but!
Perhaps we could develop a best practice based on the UK and it's c. 70 million population. These lessons should come primarily from within the UK.
Stafford Beer, Cybersyn and Chile seem to offer powerful evidence against the effectiveness of direct injection of 'obviously sensible' uses of systems thinking in government. I am not sure your blogs address this, or if they do it is along the benevolent dicator (LKY) model. For many of us this is more frightening than bumbling leaders.
Stafford Beer was mentioned in despatches a few days ago.
POSIWID
"we who want regime change...must develop a plan to take power away from these parties and bureaucracies and give it to others…" Jesus Christ Dom. So, not sinister at all then. What could possibly go wrong? You said previously that the only person with the power to change the system is the PM with the current incumbent being neither interested nor capable. So just work to get someone better into power, who genuinely cares about this stuff, with good people around them. And given the importance of incentives, also focus relentlessly on finding ways to change the incentives. Either strategy will re-shape the system from within. Look forward to the discussion on how to influence the system positively rather than smashing it like a cackling despot.
See Bookworm303's responses on the merits of 'democracy' as we think we have it.
Democracy in the UK has always been a polite fiction, hence an increasingly educated/aware population have decreasing faith in it. Johnson's administration have done us one (back-handed) favour by pulling the scales from our eyes and overtly announcing the hollowness, and fragility of our system, and its dependence on "good chaps who play by the rules". Once you have an administration which play by different rules, the essentially agreed nature of the UK constitution is revealed in all its weakness.
Hey ho. This feels like Groundhog Day. We know that politicians, the civil service and even business people have limited thinking. It’s not that they’re not ‘clever’. I’m sure they’re clever in the terms that schools and their compatriots think of them. But they’re so often linear, trapped in codified thinking without that intuition, that willingness to combine ‘evidence’ with a leap of insight, a desire to listen to ‘outliers’ because they’re not senior enough, so what do they know, they’re not ‘established’ or academically laureled enough, so are too risky etc etc. Cannot ‘hear’. In my view this yet again comes down to education to at least some extent. If children of all backgrounds, classes and so called ‘IQ’ are asked to integrate ideas from all sorts of sources, often appearing unrelated, but are nevertheless part of a great pattern of ideas, which the really clever can synthesise and turn into themes which startle and influence and the same (or others),who really know how to get people engaged and willing to act, then this same treadmill continues. Just marginal improvements on what we already have. This in my view is true in politics, business, medicine…. Adopting ‘defensive practices’
Agreed. Every institution, no matter how fast-paced at first, becomes defensive. First, defensive of its work/profit. Then, defensive of what it calls its values. Then, defensive of its processes. Then defensive simply of its existence. The private sector (or at least the parts of it I've worked in, usually US-dominated) is no better than the public sector. Perhaps we should take a lesson from the Victorians, who were very good at creating new things whilst making everyone believe they were existing things. Difficult in today's media/tech world, but possibly the one time client journalism might actually have some benefit?
DC the man who followed the wrong science on covid and plunged the uk into a lemming covid strategy based on Neil Furguson's predictions of catastrophe.
Can't wait to see the solution for the politically driven "democratic" systems
Zzzzzzzz
This has to be the most stupid time in human history
Trying to reinvent the wheel and avoid solutions
The basis of freedom is economic opportunity not prattling on about the current political comedy
The Roman Empire failed for the same reasons
History repeating .... Nothing learnt
Starmer has probably done enough to demonstrate he’s put momentum/Corbyn behind him, and moved to the center. He’s boring as f**k, but I guess he’s won some supporters in the domestic establishment and some powerful support from outside the UK.
Sunak is the conservative poster boy shoo in, carefully curated, and only wheeled out into public view for good news, and protected from everything else. But he looks so frail from his PR isolation, that the public will be concerned that he’s all image, and no substance, and might start crying at the first bit of trouble he has to deal with, although they guess he won’t be dealing with it anyway
So can the UK establishment avoid falling under the influence of any one particular external power, EU, China, USA… (although the EU looks like it’s under pressure again to break up).
The UK public have borne the cost of the UK being the first to show how to exit the EU, and those particular costs won’t be over yet a while.
Piled on top of that, the UK public have also borne the UK covid crash course structural reset of the UK economy, ready for a Phoenix like revival from the ashes… some time soon they say… but that particular story won’t be over yet a while either.
We’ll sustain this course against the headwinds for as long as the public are willing to put up with it… and that’s a long long while too.
The west is burning out the dead structural wood quickly, and painfully, most painfully for the UK of all… because we left it so late to change course… even austerity since 2008 couldn’t get us close enough to the end goal, to avoid such severe pain.
Few of my independent business competitors remain, they have all been gobbled up cheap, by investment firms over the last 18 months, and that process won’t be over yet a while either.
Anyway, the UK’s largest problem is longevity… healthcare should be for preventing needless suffering, and not extending physical life for the sake of it, as there is little we can currently do about the brain, which is pretty much past it for the overwhelming majority, by their late 50’s.
Anyway… we’ve been put on some global restructuring and recovery plan… and the elderly establishment elites running the plan within the UK will be primarily looking after themselves.
The people who know, the people who care, the people who can. A simple maxim for change but easy to say, unbelievably hard to actually bring to bear
In my opinion change only comes about from a shock that transforms or a gradual realisation that things are bad and discomfort snd pain enough to want something different. Where are we on either on these ‘change curves’. Are we on either in the eyes of the public? If not how could they be generated? And should they be?
Arguably, those changes were observed in the UK historically: 1906, 1931, 1945, 1979. Radical course changes. The issue today is a 19th century constitution/mechanism of govt not keeping up with multiple changes in other areas which they previously governed, eg tech/media/public trust/UK position in global system.
Why 1906 and not 1914 out of interest?
I was thinking more in terms of UK General Elections. 1906 Liberal landslide enabled them to construct earliest iteration of welfare state. 1931 split Labour, kept them out of power for a generation, and ushered in long period of "coalition" govt with no real opposition. 1945 and 1979 are more obvious, though arguably 1983 GE landslide enabled Thatcher to proceed more quickly than in her first term. However, these were all revolutionary changes of governing ethos, but not really seismic changes to the system/machinery of govt overall.
I'm out of here.
£10 a month for fairytale waffle and a lack of honesty and no replies to the difficult questions
No going to waste any more of my time and money
🙄
DC good luck 👍 you'll be needing as much as you can get
You were a one trick Brexit pony
Bye Bye 👋
Because you reveal more than you illuminate, your warmth of opinion will not be missed,
😂 this really is the most stupid time in human history
Bye Bye
Enjoy the echo chamber
Well done Dominic for having the balls and the interest to engage those Scots down the local. Really talking to people face to face creates trust, even if they don’t end up agreeing with you. We could do with a lot more of this from our politicians.
Guerilla teams armed against the unwary won in Afghanistan. Not sophisticated and centralised ‘new models’, imposed on people, some of whom subscribed, some did not not understand, not warfare values from the west. Just a real understanding of the people they were dealing with at a regional and tribal level, a desire to win above all else and primitive weapons. A ghastly, cruel but salutary lesson on the nature of ‘change’
Today's disclosures tell a different story - that the West literally shot itself in the foot i.e. whatever else had happened, the current abhorrent situation is down to sheer and massive incompetence/incontinence at leadership levels.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/27/afghanistan-nato-mission-corruption-military-soldier
This makes a lot of sense to me