David Cameron said he wanted an administration of quiet effectiveness, and instead he’s got a historic loud muddle over his rushed NHS reforms and it’s a pretty typical debacle for Mr Cameron. 

We might have expectd it. Mr Cameron had a horror of wasting his first term (as Tony Blair’s autobiography confirmed he wasted his), and has undertaken a big slate of policy changes to be achieved quickly.  Besides, in some areas the deficit strategy has forced the pace.

Mr Cameron had always been thought to admire Tony Blair, the great triangulator and communicator. But it was an ambiguous fandom: a return to Cabinet chimed with some of Mr Cameron’s pre-election remarks, as he sought to distance himself from Sofa Government.

True to his word, the Cabinet has enjoyed renewed importance, partly because of the dynamics of coalition. But there may also have been a useful traditionalism in the thinking: Mr Cameron was chairman of the board, if not primus inter pares.

When Mr Cameron went to war, over Libya, he stressed the discussion and endorsement round the table. Perhaps it made sense to dip Lib-Dem hands in the blood. (For a sharp account of Cabinet government, see “Cabinet government”, The Better Government Initiative, December 2010.)

However, relations with Whitehall seem to be as difficult under Cameron as they had been under Blair, and for much the same reasons. They have provoked Blairite responses.

There was an initial love-in as Gus O’Donnell’s note on, and planning for, hung Parliaments, and the subsequent inter-party negotiations, went swimmingly. The Cabinet Secretary briefly became part of a trinity of GOD, DC and NC.

Last May, they strode down Whitehall between Downing Street and Westminster, as the incarnation of a new hep accommodation between the executive and the legislative worlds.

The sheer speed and suddenness of policy announcements then ensured chaos. The NHS, education, housing benefits, police and BBC were all subjected to rapid change which bore little resemblance to party manifestos, or – even where they did – deserved and didn’t get a decent, formal post-election discussion. Instead, the reforms were announced as though pre-ordained. Any scrutiny by Whitehall or the public looked like unseemly squabbling rather than stately deliberation.

We can leave a little on one side Iain Duncan Smith and his welfare policy as an area where Whitehall and the public knew very well where the incoming government might want to go, and where the latter presumably not only agreed but had laid down some plans. And Ken Clarke is presumably singing from the Ministry of Justice’s liberal song-sheet. At least so far, there is an admirable smoothness in these areas. Pensions policy seems to be receiving the proper Green Paper/White Paper routine.

Mr Cameron has learned from Tories as well as New Labour. Like Mrs Thatcher, Cameron knows all change, including decentralisation, must be forced from the centre. He may want to be a better Thatcherite than she was: he seems determined to re-model the welfare state. If he can’t shrink and privatise it, he will – like John Major – at least make the reforms which make these easier later.

Perhaps the Cameron strategy is to make muddled progress, but progress at least, and endure the loss of political capital caused by some climb-downs, and endure it now and on an ad hoc basis. That’s better than paying the political price nearer election time. The cuts and mini-riots become a handy distraction.

Much of the policy chaos seems to flow from hasty action by ministers such as Andrew Lansley and Michael Gove. Perhaps it’s a vicious circle: Cameron told his ministers to get on with it; the latter steam-rollered their departments; and the officials couldn’t very well protect their ministers from their own enthusiasm. 

In recent weeks, David Cameron has been reported to feel (very much as Tony Blair did) that Whitehall is dragging its feet over reforms. But ministries may very properly be more fussed about means than ends: propriety is their job. Cameron’s response has been to throw out his former insistence that he would work traditionally (presumably with the Cabinet Office and Whitehall) rather than with an official private office teaming with politically-appointed Special Advisers (SPADs). He wants his own Blairish janissaries checking on ministers and departments alike to ensure that Number 10′s strategies are followed. (The Guardian has looked at the issue  and there is useful almost stroppy blog from the Institute for Government’s Zoe Gruhn.)

The administrative and policy disarray has been matched by a more surprising failure of presentation. The Cameron Number 10 was reported to spew out briefings which flagrantly contradicted one another. It is said to be irritated by media accounts of ministerial muddle. So now we hear that The Grid (forward-looking message control) has been beefed-up so as to avoid presentational accidents. All in all, Blairite media-handling is now the order of the day. So much for frankness.

Oddly, David Cameron is even more opaque than Tony Blair, who made a mist of transparency. Even accounts of Cameron’s having a Tory-ish pragmatism are discounted by alternative narratives which seem as well or as little informed. The PM doesn’t really bother to inform us.

But we can detect a rush to Blairite management. This makes gloomy news because we had half a hope that Mr Cameron wanted to help form a modern way to govern Britain that built on the past rather than skirted round it.

The Homes Office is a dysfunctional self-obsessed bunker. The Foreign Office is full of clever managers of decline. The Treasury is a tight-fisted bastion of Keynesianism. That was roughtly the message a casual viewer would have gleaned from the latest series from Mr Cockerell.

The shows did reveal rather more than that, but much of the richer picture consisted in big guns of the recent past banging away at whichever of their fellows they had fallen out with.

A lot of this was dangerously like Yes, Minister, in being a chronic mis-reading of the problem facing the Civil Service.  

What we didn’t get was any proper discussion of what reforms might be needed in the way Whitehall works and how it might relate to government and the rest of Westminster.

I am clarifying my own view that what we need is strong, small, elitist Whitehall which is charged with wider and more public work than we have known.

I think Whitehall should move beyond serving the Crown by serving ministers (and hiding behind their skirts). Instead, they should become more complex. They should continue their old work of advising ministers, but they should also have divisons which formally develop alternative policy options at the behest of Parliament. They should do less of the actual work of running government.

In effect, then, the Civil Service should stay independent, but work continuously for all sorts of potential governments and none, as well as serving the present government especially in helping to formulate policy and ensuring delivery.

The point here, in part, is to open up the Civil Service to far more scrutiny. The move would make it harder for departments to become bastions of particular orthodoxies.

Just as importantly, the political parties would be put under much closer scrutiny as they develop policy. Their work would be second-guessed by official policy professionals, especially for its workability.

This would recognise that politicians are – rightly - populists who seek general directions and tone in policy but who need both help and discipline as they make specific proposals.

The Home Office was for years thought to hate punishing criminals; the Foreign Office loved Arabs and Europe; the Treasury loved Keyenes. These cliches were never quite true, but that they built up at all was a sign that Whitehall was either misunderstood or was prone to monomania and perhaps a bit of both. Not good. 

I was irritated by the Cockerell shows because they seemed to me lazy (or possibly, chronically underfunded). They trotted out old material and added some more recent rather gossipy stuff.

We needed far more.

Voters take the view that the Civil Service and local councils are full of self-serving job’sworths who need a huge shakeup. (Yes, I do partly blame the ridiculously over-rated Yes Minister.)

Sue Cameron noted (“Whitehall: service not a business”, FT, 4 November 2009) that Sir Christopher Meyer (our former ambassador in Washington) says that “we must not destroy the public service ethos which has already been so damaged”. She says he remarks that “Whitehall has been watered by consultants, special advisers and businessmen with ‘no obvious increase in efficiency’”.

One could go on and argue that business is brilliant (when it is brilliant) at making stuff and providing services. But it doesn’t do the kind of thinking – usually a difficult balancing act – which is involved in advising on policy.

In short, delivery is not remotely the same as deliberation.

That is perhaps why Mike Freer, the leader of Barnet Council, is so interesting when he writes about the increasingly bsineslike approach he is exploring. (“eCouncil should soon be taking off”, The Times, 4 November, 2009). He envisages councils being stricter in asking value-for-money questions. But the novelty of his approach is to explore ways of offering residents different services at different prices, along with help in doing more things for themselves.

You can see bags of pitfalls in this approach, and so can Mr Freer. His point seems to be that in the delivery of services, business seems to have more solutions than bureaucrats, and they have to be explored.

This is in line with thinking which began seriously with Mrs Thatcher.

But whether it is quite what David Cameron means by “post bureaucratic government” is another matter.

Isn’t it a matter of horses for courses? Making official policy is necessarily at least in part a bureaucratic function (quasi-judicial, deliberative, advisory). Delivering services was for years misconceived as a bureaucratic function and is now seen not to be.

(1) As the Financial Times notes, the four most recent Cabinet Secretaries (that is: the head of the Civil Service and head of the Cabinet Office) have all expressed concern at the recent drift of power into Number 10 (and the special advisers there and in ministries) and away from Cabinet and the Civil Service. (The FT mourns the process and suggests a plausible future.)  This is most clear in their evidence to a House of Lords committee inquiry into the “Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government“.

(2) It is worth being a little sharp about their relatively new expression of concern. As The Economist points out, they let the situation drift that way (and maybe connived at it) when they were in office:

“all four, under first Lady Thatcher and then Mr Blair and Mr Brown, went along with the reforms they now deplore.”

(3) Jonathan Powell, who was Tony Blair’s politically-appointed chief of staff, has submitted a thoughtful account of how the right amount of power could be returned to the formal institutions of the Civil Service (in the form of the Cabinet Office) and the Cabinet whilst accepting modern realities. He believes the Cabinet can’t be the place where detailed policy is discussed, but where it can and should be signed-off. He believes that the Cabinet Office must (a) stay very close to Number 10 and (b) co-ordinate and chivvy the rest of Whitehall but not second guess or over-ride it.

This seems logical enough and would be a recipe for strong ministers reporting to Cabinet for collective authority under the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, for his or her part, would know that through the Cabinet Office there was a coherent understanding across the whole system.

(4) It remains wholly unclear whether the political class has understood how important this all is administratively or electorall. David Cameron send very mixed signals and it is completely unclear who might lead the Labour party in the near future. Unfortunately, the track record of senior civil servants has been very poor: until very recently they haven’t pressed their own claim to have a voice in the matter. 

(5) The Institute for Government may be just the ticket. It may succeed in being where reforms can be discussed and pressed home.

It’s in two parts (after v brief remarks by MBG editor):
(1) Current proposals for the reform of Parliament
(2) Some shakers and movers on the reform of Parliament

MBG editor RDN remarks:
I have elsewhere argued that the House of Commons in principle is supreme and has total command over everything it does. MPs could grab control of Parliament and the Government any time they had the cohesion and courage to do so. The MPs (and the public) need not wait for Government or party initiative on any of this.

There is a rather circular argument that the current MPs have too little moral authority to initiate reforms. On the other hand, if they don’t it will be all the more arguable that they are showing no leadership.

It is great that almost all current proposals want MPs to have more power – discredited as they are supposed to be by a tinpot scandal over small sums of allowance money rather badly-paid legislators were told to pitch for anyway they liked.

(1) Current proposals for the reform of Parliament

MPs to elect Select Committees and chairmen
This is a high-impact low-risk way to increase MPs’ scrutiny of and power over Ministers and ministries

MPs to initiate legislation
It is hard to predict what this would achieve though it would presumably weaken the Government, which has the power of taking the initiative in legislation.

MPs to control parliament’s time-table
This would very much weaken the government’s power to get its way over legislation – which might be seen as weakening or strengthening democratic control and authority.

Fixed term parliaments
At the moment the Prime Minister has the power in effect to dissolve Parliament, provided he can command a majority in the House of Commons. This change would weaken the Prime Minister’s current power over the Government’s supporters and the opposition. There would need to be new rules to determine how to get rid of a very unpopular government before its due term.

MPs to face re-selection
This would weaken the power of the sitting (incumbent) MP but also of the party machinery which currently acts as gatekeeper. The Tories are already experimenting with “primaries”.

MPs face recall by constituents
This would strengthen the power of constituents over their Member of Parliament – and that would weaken the MPs’ ability to speak freely as a representative (rather than as a mandated delegate).

Smaller Parliament
This would make Parliament more manageable but it would increase the size of constituencies and increase the number of constituents each MP is representing (arguably making it harder for each MP to identify with a neighbourhood or take each constituent complaint as seriously).

PM by direct election
This would tend to the “presidential” aspect of the premiership and raise issues of accountability. At the moment, the PM is in the end a creature of Parliament and this approach would weaken that.

Ministers from outside Parliament
This would increase the “gene pool” for the top jobs but reduce Parliamentary control over the executive. It would also reduce the likelihood of MPs becoming ministers which might reduce their subservience to their party and Government managers. It might also reduce the attraction of becoming an MP.

Proportional Representation
In general this produces “fairer” representation, makes forming a government more a matter of party negotiation in private, increases the turnover of governments, weakens the MPs’ connection with a constituency and increases their dependency on a party (though it increases the number of parties in play).

Citizens to trigger referendums or debates in parliament
This would complicate politics, possibly in a good way, though it would increase the likelihood of populist “flair-up” issues taking a disproportionate amount of Parliamentary time.

A new less confrontational chamber for Parliament
Arguably British politics stuck in an unproductive tribal shouting match and the present chamber encourages that. Perhaps a post-class  and post-ideological needs a less confrontational chamber to express and allow an new consensualism to emerge. It might be even more boring to too may people, though.

Elections to the House of Lords
It is hard to see how to avoid making this into a new vehicle for party power, or for show-off independents. It is easy to imagine more imaginative selection processes, free of party power, to find talented, experienced people for the revising chamber.

(2) Some shakers and movers on the reform of Parliament

The time has come for Spectator readers to save the constitution from politicians
Fraser Nelson
Spectator
3 June 2009
(with PoliticsHome)

Discusses:
Voter recall of MPs
MPs reselection by constituents (every 4 years or whatever)
Office for Budget responsibility (being considered by David Cameron)
Annual departmental justification of spending
Larger MP salaries, maybe with no expenses
Whether the existing parliament ought to frame reform
PM to be directly elected
Some/all ministers appointed from outside parliament
Smaller parliament

The real cure for Britain’s political malaise
Philip Stephens
Financial Times
2 June 2009

Discusses:
Gordon Brown considering voting reform
David Cameron wants “Massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power change”
DC “thinks about” fixed term Parliaments
DC considers constituency recall of MPs
Stephens on decentralising: “They would prefer to strangle local democracy than risk their own popularity.”
Local business taxes to increase local democracy

David Cameron leads Alan Johnson in the new battle to be the boldest reformer
James Forsyth
Spectator
30 May 2009

Discusses:
How DC has a very radical reform rhetoric and less solid actual plans
Brown’s John Smith Memorial lecture, 1996: “New Labour wants to give power to the people”
Brown began premiership “proposing changes that will transfer power from the Prime Minister and the executive”
DC to Power Inquiry, May 2006: Power has gone to bureaucrats in Brussuels, judges and
Quangocracts
Cameron’s “speech on Tuesday” proposed “Citizen’s Intitative” and a 5 percent trigger for referendum
Proposed transfer of power “from Brussels to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy.”

This is a constitutional crisis. Dave dare not blow it
Fraser Nelson
Spectator
16 May 2009

Discusses:
Hansard Society say: Only 19 percent say Parliament is working for me
20,000 voters or 0.05 percent of voters hold power, an insider remarks: “It’s the swing voters in swing seats who decide the balance of power. We have computers to work out where they live. We can love bomb them.”

Why we need separation of powers
Andrew Turnbull
(Former cabinet secretary and head of the Home Civil Service)
Financial Times
2 June 2009

Discusses:
“Vernon Bogdanor’s important new book, The New British Constitution”
“More radically, we could follow French practice, which requires any deputy appointed to the government to stand down from the National Assembly. Or we could adopt the German/Swedish model of politically appointed, but non-elected, ministers.

“The Commons does not control which committees are established, who chairs them, who can table legislation and how time is allocated. All this is controlled by the government through the Whips office.”

The Plan by Daniel Hannan and Carswell:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-plan-twelve-months-to-renew-britain/3704883

The Power Inquiry
chaired by Helena Kennedy

(Conservative) Democracy Taskforce, chaired by Ken Clarke
(A summary)
by Hélène Mulholland
The Guardian
14 January 2008

The signs are not good at this moment. The Tories are leaving it perilously late to make well-grounded policy statements. They are having at best a mediocre credit crunch. David Cameron seems a litle too keen to hog the limelight.

Worse, in terms of their presenting themselves as solid, their shadow chancellor seems to have no idea how to draw the line between being a man of the world and being a plaything to the super-rich. 

George Osborne has a private office part-funded by a Rothschild and schmoozes an oligarch client of the Russian mafia state on his yacht while it is moored off the villa of another Rothschild.

This fuels gleeful speculation that David Cameron’s loyalty to an inner coterie of toffs may be unhelpful.

Tending the other way is plain fact that people like Michael Gove are plainly important to the Conservative’s bid for power.  What’s more, the shadow cabinet seems to have its fair share of talent, Eton or not. It could afford to let the maverick David Davis do his diva thing. 

We need every sign that David Cameron is proud of his savvy, grounded heavy-hitters and wants them to develop and promote consistent policy. And care about the proprieties.