Desperate denial

Recent political news have devoted countless column inches to the perceived rise in UKIP. Following this, it appears that the Conservative Party is in the process of imploding over Europe. For old fogies like me, this has very much a deja vu feeling as the Conservatives imploded over Europe in the last months of the Major Government, before Blair swept to power in 1997.

To date, the political reaction from all the mainstream political parties has been to blather on about how they need to reconnect with people and debunk UKIP's policies. If they believe this, they are in a desperate state of denial or do not want to publicly admit to knowing what is really going on. Some politicians are dropping pretty big hints that they know why UKIP are doing well, but they are staying 'on message' and talking about "engaging with people". I fear this approach is just kicking the problem to 2015 when a general election will make this issue someone else's problem. Sums up Government policy really!

So let's start with some basic political realities.

UKIP are a fringe party. This means that in terms of MPs and councillors, they are in the same category as the loony parties and the BNP/EDL or whatever they are called now. UKIP's policies are not as extreme as those parties, but it is not much more credible either. The voters know this. Debunking UKIP's more nutty policies is a waste of time because the voter is not interested in hearing it.

Also I do not consider the EU and immigration to be genuine voter issues. I am not saying the average voter is not concerned. What I am saying is that these topics are 'manufactured news'. They matter to the voter because the newspapers and politicians make it matter in order to promote their political viewpoints. In reality, ordinary people care about the economy, the NHS and social issues whether that be about social welfare, housing or crime.

So why are UKIP successful? They have no meaningful policies on those key issues.

UKIP are doing well because unlike all the mainstream parties, they are relatively honest both ideologically and in the way they approach politics. They have not made any promises that they have had to break and they are not tainted by the MP expenses scandal. Voters are turning to UKIP not because of their policies, but because the average voter is starting to hate the mainstream politician for their lies, broken promises and rampant corruption. This is a frightening concept for the big parties as it could signal a destruction in the political status quo that has been broadly prevalent in British politics for the last 70 years. In short, it threatens their cosy arrangement of pretending to represent the British electorate and pretending to offer a political choice at the ballot box.

I find Farage to be an enjoyable political figure to watch, but he preaches a very old and dangerous message. In the past that message would have been to blame the jews/blacks/gays/other religions/other nations for the problems being experienced by the population at large. Unfortunately such tricks remain as popular now as they did then, only the topic now is Europe and immigration. I have yet to hear a single coherent argument or economic case for how the UK would be better off pissing into the European tent from outside rather than going inside that tent and settling things the old fashioned way! The funny part is that the Germans are deeply frustrated because they see the UK as a potentially valuable ally for implementing much needed reform of the EU. Instead they just get lots of incoherent shouting and mixed messages. A bit like 1939 then...

In short, if the coalition government thinks that focussing on the EU and immigration is going to help them, they are in for a nasty shock at the next election. As was the case in 1997, the electorate were desperate to get rid of a corrupt political elite. Blair and Labour capitalised on this desire then, but with the Labour brand now firmly linked with that corruption that the electorate hated so much, what will happen in 2015? I fear that the current trend towards populist electioneering (as practised by UKIP) is only set to increase and so the political battleground will be fought over issues relating to the EU, immigration and the economy. The electorate will hate it, but will they hate it enough to do something unpredictable?

My prediction is not in 2015, but by 2020 things will get serious and probably messy.

When is welfare really welfare?

There seems to have been a fair bit of argument in recent weeks about welfare, those who claim it and so on. The coalition is claiming that it is cracking down on the skivers. Some thing this is a good thing, others think it is all a smokescreen.

So what is the truth?

I think the pie chart (sorry I do not have the source, but it looks mostly credible) tells a rather interesting story. There is also a website devoted to covering this issue - http://www.neweconomics.org/mythbusters. It is a pity actual monetary figures are not used to support the pie charts, but they do tell an interesting story which runs counter to the current political narrative. No doubt a decent bit of research, which I do not propose to do at this point, would unearth the proper figures.

From a cynical civil servant perspective, all the political narrative about welfare is a complete farce and hot air. Unfortunately I do not just mean the coalition's figures either, the opposition are also being very disingenuous.

The truth is that almost every single government and opposition policy for reforming the welfare state is either pointless or will make the problems worse. They will either achieve little or cause counter-productive effects. The whole debate is about political ideology and has almost no grasp of the realities on the ground.

Let's be clear, the benefits system can be abused. A family containing 6 or more children, some of whom are disabled, with adults out of work will be able to generate a significant income from benefits. Distasteful and unfair as this may be, this type of claimant represents a rather small amount from the total benefits bill. However, it is far easier to try and implement policies that target these and other relatively small groups than it is to get to grips with the welfare system as a whole.

Fundamentally, you have to ask what is the government's total welfare bill going on and how much disposal income does it actually give people? For example, housing benefit in the pie chart above represents a significant chunk yet this is hardly likely to result in disposable income for the claimants as they are likely to pass it directly onto private landlords. In fact, if the bill really is this high, does it make the case to bring back council housing? Not only would government and local councils actually get a return from such housing (the old paying rent versus paying a mortgage argument) such a policy would assist in depressing rents and house prices. Not perhaps a popular outcome, but necessary if you want to reduce living costs and create a sustainable economic environment where people can live within their means and spend money in the wider economy.

I would also seriously question as to how much money is going into 'enablers' as part of the overall welfare budget. The government is currently paying hundreds of millions of pounds to companies dealing with job seekers, disability claimants etc. By any recognised measure, including from the government's own reporting, these companies are significantly under-performing to a degree that is a political scandal. Sadly, these companies and their management heavily influence and donate to the political parties so this sort of expenditure will not be reigned in which is a shame as a huge amount of money could be saved.

Whatever the 'facts' it seems to be a ridiculous state of affairs that the state is supposedly shrinking, with so much being privatised and yet the government is spending far more each year than it did when it had several national industries to manage. Where is all the money going? Apart from to the banks of course! Welfare is just part of a much broader problem. It is all politics, with spin and untruths flying everywhere and no coherent and credible plan with cross-party support for getting to grips with it. Sadly it serves a political purpose of providing a smokescreen that hides the enormous political failure of various government to be able to implement good policies.

Scottish Independence - Vision versus pragmatism

If recent surveys are to be believed, the yes campaign for Scottish independence is not doing very well and so political questions are being asked why this is the case. Having met and worked with a fair few Scots over the years, I think I have the answer. For some reason, Scots tend to be very pragmatic. I cannot explain why, maybe it is a cultural trait brought on by the weather!

Actually, I think the SNP and the yes campaign are doing a very poor job of selling their case and as a professional civil servant (with Machiavellian leanings, let's not deny that!) I can recognise some of the tactics the yes campaign is using which is so spectacularly failing. They are too reliant on making the emotional case for independence and they are totally failing to make the pragmatic or hard nosed case that the Scots want to know about. Listen to them when they answer questions, the responses are always about how wonderful and liberating independence would be with Scots choosing their destiny and making their own vision. I think they could just save everyone a lot of waffle and simply say, "vote for independence because we all hate those Conservative/Southern tossers telling us what to do!"

I have never been able to fob off a Scot that I have worked with by giving a vague answer talking about 'vision' or 'choices'. Like I said, they always seem to be very pragmatic and can smell bullshit! The staff members who I count as the best staff I have managed have all been Scottish and I put this down to, in part, their willingness to challenge me and to try and drill down to the facts.

So what 'facts' do the SNP use to support their case for independence as well as their more emotive arguments?

I have paid a fair bit of attention to the debates, both for professional reasons and out of curiosity and I have to confess that as an outsider who is meant to be looking for this sort of detail I cannot even answer that question. Even more of an issue for me is that I have read a bit of SNP sponsored analysis and assessments of what an independent Scotland would mean in a practical sense. I threw all those reports away with disgust, the quality of analysis was so bad. Their is plenty about their 'vision', but absolutely nothing about how they will make that vision a reality.

I should like to use a simple example. When Philip Hammond, then recently made Secretary of State for Defence, was told of Alex Salmond's plan to ask for the Scottish proportion of the armed forces, his response was devastating. "The UK Armed Forces are a highly integrated and very sophisticated fighting force.The idea that you can sort of break off a little bit, like a square on a chocolate bar, and that would be the bit that went north of the border, is frankly laughable." You need to only to have a cursory glance at the UK armed forces to realise that he is right. For a more in-depth analysis of the poor thinking that went into this policy by the SNP, this rather good post from the thinpinstripedline covers it rather well.

But let us move on from those flaws and focus on the parts that matter to the Scots. Reportedly many Scots are anti-nuclear weapons and the SNP are very happy to espouse their 'vision' of Scotland being nuclear weapons free. Of course this really means nuclear submarine free since all the submarines, nuclear armed or otherwise, tend to be supported from the same base. Having set out this 'vision' how do the SNP intend to make it a reality? More importantly, how do they intend to deal with the consequences of this policy? Remember that in politics almost nothing is black and white, there are always consequences. Well believe it or not, the SNP did sponsor a report into this issue. Unfortunately, they seemed to have given it to Greenpeace to do the analysis. It is so bad, I will not even link to it for fear of promoting a travesty of economic analysis! Effectively, the SNP have no plan or even any credible economic figures to even form a plan. Thus the thousands of Scots living on the west coast who directly or indirectly benefit from the millions brought into the local economy by the Clyde naval base would lose a significant source of income. This does not even touch on the likelihood of the British government in a pique of anger at losing the independence vote scrapping naval ship orders and refits conducted at both Glasgow and Rosyth dockyards. What was that about pragmatic Scots and turkeys voting for Christmas..?

This is just defence. Look at SNP policies and (lack of) analysis on various other important issues such as energy generation, economic policies, fishery management, funding the NHS, being a part of Europe... the list goes on. There is a complete lack of anything proving that Scotland would be better off. The Scottish Executive has civil servants, what are they doing? Aren't they drawing up any detailed plans on how to sustain an independent Scotland? Surely they are not going to start doing the work on trying to exploit Scotland's strengths after the date of the referendum with no preparatory work being done beforehand? As a UK civil servant, where do I start if I am told to work with the Scottish civil servants on 'sorting things out'? One of the most frustrating aspects of my job is dealing with people who do not really know what they want. I shudder to think what this would be like on a national scale.

Normally, this lack of detail does not matter in politics and when campaigning on an issue. Good looks, down to earth charm, appealing to emotions and an inspiring oration on how wonderful life will be are the tools of the trade for the competent politician selling their big idea to the electorate. This is the fundamental flaw with democracy, appearance and emotion is everything, substance and hard nosed realism is meaningless. Yet the Scots seem determined to prove this is not the case with them. They may yet teach the other regions in the UK something about democracy during this referendum. Pragmatism and critical analysis have their place in a functioning democracy, lose it at your peril!

Energy strategy? What energy strategy!

When it comes to examining UK energy policies and strategies for the National Grid for the last fifteen years and up to the present day, things do not look rosy. If I were to articulate UK aspirations for its future energy consumption, I would break it down into two clear objectives:

1) Reduce the environmental effects of current energy sources (I do not just mean reduce carbon emissions).

2) Get away from unstable sources of energy such as foreign oil and gas.

Governments of various colours and in various countries seem to broadly agree with these objectives, but the UK government (past and present) is making a pig’s ear of it! Prevarication, self interest, contradictory policies, greed and incompetence all feature in the rich tapestry that is the recent history of UK energy generation. This is immensely frustrating because with clear leadership and sensible planning and management the two objectives named above can be achieved. I do not believe they are mutually exclusive and in fact I also think there are several opportunities that can be exploited. Sadly the incoherent approach to this issue is having a ripple effect across much of Whitehall disrupting other areas of government business, what should be simple has become complex.

So to repeat one of my favourite phrases when faced with a complex problem, “Let’s simply.” What are the options for obtaining more energy for the grid.

Options for construction available now

Nuclear power plants

Coal fired power plants

Gas fired power plants

Oil fired power plants

Wind farms

Solar panels

Dam projects driving turbines

Tidal barriers

Biofuel

Energy from Waste

Possible future construction options

Fusion/thorium power plants

Underwater turbines

Wave power

No doubt there are a few choices I have missed, but the above seem like a nice wide choice to me. Let’s rule out the impractical ones first. That means coal and oil are out as these run counter to the objectives stated above. We can rule out solar for the UK Grid except for micro generation. I definitely think solar should be used for people’s homes, but I find it rather annoying that solar panels are still horribly expensive and no one has yet been clever enough to make them resemble roof tiles thus improving their looks. While solar would benefit individual householders, this is not an answer to powering the Grid. I am also outright rejecting biofuel. It cannot be generated in any kind of sustainable way to fuel the National Grid or as a vehicle fuel. Anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves or psychotic enough to willingly suggest we condemn millions of people to starvation.

Gas power is a bit of a gamble right now as to make it compliant with the objectives makes the leap of faith that the UK is able to exploit domestic gas reserves, mainly through fracking. I am assuming that methane gas generation from agricultural means is unsustainable for similar reasons to biofuel. I am going to rule gas out at this stage as it currently relies on foreign gas reserves unless proven otherwise. It may well be that fracking will prove to be viable, but you cannot make a multi billion pound decision on a maybe! OK I lie, the government makes those decisions all the time, but I am going to make the small point that if the UK does have enough shale gas to be worthwhile, it might be best to use it for powering vehicles rather than power stations as gas can use the current infrastructure methods with relatively minor adjustments. This is a decision that is best put off until we have the ‘ground truth’.

I have put underwater turbines and wave power as possible future options and I have to confess they hold a great deal of appeal to me. Sadly the investment in this area has been lacking and so I am not aware of anyone who is able to claim these are options available today. I definitely think research money needs to be poured into these areas in a big way. Sadly this money is being hovered up by wind farms. As for fusion/thorium, I attended an excellent lecture on this topic last year by a scientist specialising in this field and so I know we are a long way away from being able to deploy it, thus this option goes into the long term research pile.

Energy from waste (EfW) does have its uses and is a much better way to get rid of rubbish than landfill. I have no reason to doubt government claims that a properly managed EfW plant does not cause adverse health impacts to nearby residents, but I am aware that lots of people have their doubts on this matter. Either way, I can only see a limited future for EfW plants, they can contribute to the national grid, but due to NIMBYism and the logistical impracticalities of trying to funnel huge amounts of rubbish to them daily, I just cannot envisage there being that many of them. Like solar, they can contribute rather than deliver anything hugely substantial.

This effectively leaves the UK with looking at nuclear power or renewable energy as its best options. This is no kind of earth shattering revelation, but it helps to recap why we find ourselves with these options. For me, a complex picture has been simplified. Now it is time to dig a bit deeper into the implementation of these options.

Implementing tidal barriers

The fact that we do not have more of this form of power generation is down to lack of vision and lack of sensible planning and financing. Like EfW and solar, it probably could not meet all our electricity needs without having a disproportionate effect in various unspoilt areas. However, there is definitely scope for at least building a number. One of the most prolific, reliable and untapped resources available to the UK is being completely wasted. It is nothing short of stupid and the government's unwillingness to properly fund this sort of option itself does the UK a great dis-service. Waiting for the private sector to fund such big projects is pointless as history has shown that only governments are really prepared to make this sort of long term investment.

Building wind farms

I see a role for wind farms, just not in the numbers so desperately put forward by government policy. For me, this technology is readily implementable, hence its appeal, but its returns will not justify the huge capital outlay currently being committed into it. The reason being is due to its intermittent power output, their unpopularity with locals and the disruption they cause to important systems such as radars. Where I do see a role for wind farms is when linked to a dam/resevoir project. The power gets generated by the water flowing down from the dam or reservoir and a small number of wind farms can be used to power the pumps that push the water back up again. Again, wind farm or wind farms linked to a dam is an option that contributes to the needs of the Grid, but cannot in themselves satisfy the requirements.

Implementing the nuclear option

Well known technology with a pretty good safety record in the UK, there is a lot to be said for nuclear and many people already have. The biggest issue, as it has always been, is what to do with the waste. Sadly attempts by successive governments to privatise or delegate the management of this problem has been an unmitigated mess. This does not help allay a negative perception of nuclear power held by the population at large. In short, the nuclear industry and successive governments have buggered it up, covered up their poor decisions and so few people trust the nuclear option. The government now needs to recover from the poor decisions made in the past and rebuild some kind of new nuclear power capability. This is not going well and with now only one French company able to dictate terms the situation is not going to get better. This obsession with trusting the market to make big investments without significant subsidy is a complete fallacy. It is true of nuclear as of any of the other power generation options available.

Conclusion

Well I do not want to run around screaming that we are doomed and I say that as I suspect that when things get desperate someone will, by necessity, show some leadership and make things happen. Just expect the whole process to be very painful and very expensive.

However, if the UK government suddenly became rational and started to make decisions today to try and puruse the objectives stated above then the options really are quite simple as there is effectively little choice. For starters, a minimum nuclear option needs to be pursued sufficient to ensure that it covers the minimum power requirement for the UK in 10-15 years time. As a stop gap, some gas power plants will probably need to be built or upgraded to keep the lights on, but if shale gas is proven as viable then expect this to become a major solution even though the gas should go to transport or export. Everything else will have to go into renewable power generation. There will not be one solution that can be used, wind power alone will not do it, nor will the others as it effectively has to be a bit of everything.

Which brings me neatly onto the opportunities. If only the UK was significantly investing in nearly all the renewable/sustainable options outlined above, not just wind power (mainly wind, tidal, wave, under water and nuclear), I think it would set the UK up for being able to export that expertise and technology. There is no doubt that there will be a huge demand worldwide for sustainable energy generation and various countries will be interested in various solutions. There is a gap in the market for these sort of technologies and the country that corners this market will make a fortune. Most of those at the top of the coalition get this, but they seem incapable of implementing it, crippled by vested interests and hostile backbench MPs. This lack of leadership and foresight will cost the UK a unique opportunity and while it is not impossible to come back from this, there can be no doubt that other countries will soon overtake the UK and try to claim the wealthy prize that lies at being the successful leader in this field. We had our chance and we are blowing it. The success of nations in the 20th century revolved around securing access to energy and resources and using it for their development, I doubt very much the next century will be much different in that regards.

Disclaimer: I am not a passionate advocate of the green movement who, with some notable exceptions, do not think things through very well or argue their case with anything more than idealism. As a civil servant I have just looked at the opportunities that are available to the UK and I can see the dangers of not gaining self-sufficient and sustainable power generation. The UK in itself cannot make more than a smudge in reducing world carbon emissions nor can it really persuade other developing countries to cut back on their own development. But the UK could just focus on making the technologies work at which point the economic case would far outweigh the environmental case as far as other countries are concerned and thus the objectives of the green movement would be met by simple self promoting economics.

European Games

First off, a declaration. I am very much pro the EU, but not uncritically so. Even its most ardent supporters openly acknowledge that things are not perfect and a lot more needs to be done. For me, however, the EU is at its best when it protects EU citizens from their national governments. Without the EU, many bad laws would have been enacted by the British Government, particularly those that impacted on freedoms or our protections, particularly from large corporations. Examples such as the 90 days detention, the BT Phorm trials and the ongoing anti-competitive investigations by the EU into Microsoft, Apple, Intel and Google are prominent in my mind. So for all its faults, particularly in the way it operates and spends money, there are a lot of good things to say about what the EU does.

And so I now look at Cameron's speech on Europe which is still generating significant press coverage. My verdict is that there are some good principles in there. The Germans and the French do want the UK to get more involved, to push for beneficial change to the EU and to counter the perceived dominance of those two countries on most European issues. The UK is seen as a major player with a lot that it can bring to the table. However, I can only think that Cameron's strategy in pushing for this change is driven by political pressures, not by any realistic analysis of how best to go about bringing change and thus improving the EU. The European way of doing business is very much about obtaining consensus. Turning up from the beginning with a threat and a list of demands does not get things off to a good start!

My view is very much that Cameron (or any PM) should have simply signalled that the UK want to propose a number of changes which the UK feels is needed for itself, but would also benefit the EU as a whole. This could have been reinforced by a statement that the EU was becoming democratically tenuous in the UK (and other countries) and so it is critical that the UK government is able to demonstrate that the EU remains relevant and beneficial to the lives of UK voters. This is the sort of position that European leaders can understand and agree with. It is both a promise to be reasonable and a threat to challenge the democratic legitimacy of the EU if it cannot reform.

As for the issue of a referendum, Cameron is being as hypocritical as he accuses Alex Salmond and the SNP of being over the issue of Scottish independence. If you are going to have a seismic referendum, you should set the  date to be as short as decently possible only allowing enough time for a proper debate and not such a long period that it creates a whole load of planning and investment uncertainties. I am not saying that there should not be a referendum, but either it should be called quickly or Cameron should have left it as an unspoken threat for the EU to ponder over. That way, the UK has a strong hand in its negotiations, EU leaders can hardly be motivated to avoid the threat that a referendum brings if it is an inevitability. I fear, that the political pressure has over-ruled any common sense on this matter.

I know from my own work that being a leading member of  the EU brings significant benefits to the UK and I am going to share one example that illustrates this point. About five years ago I was dealing with a problem where working with the US was being problematic due to the way the Americans implemented their laws when co-operating with foreign governments. This issue was causing huge delays to work and creating a whole host of problems such as legal liabilities and delays to the UK. The UK had spent years trying to solve this problem, but to no avail as the Americans were not willing to change their position. My boss and I therefore approached our counterparts in the other five biggest countries within the EU to ask if they were having the same problems. Lo and behold they all replied that they were and so we set up several meetings to discuss it and to hammer out a strategy. We then invited the Americans to meet all six of us to discuss this problem which they willingly did. As a result, the Americans realised that they had a problem that needed fixing and so they went away and did so. For them, this was the ideal international co-operative scenario - the UK led the big European nations to clearly articulate the problem. Once the Americans proposed a solution, it could be agreed by the Europeans as a whole thus saving them from having to repeat the work for other countries and everyone went away happy.

Now of course, I can also give several examples of where working within the EU has not been so successful. But the example above illustrates why so many nations, both and and out of Europe want the UK to remain a leading member. It also shows how the UK is able to make itself more influential than if it tried to solve all these problems on its own. This is influence that political blustering and a UK only attitude cannot buy, it would be ludicrous to claim that giving it up would not have significant consequences. Is it worth what we pay the EU? That is a much harder question to answer, but what is clear is that the situation is far from black and white and the UK would be unlikely to be able to use the money saved to be able to protect its interests and influence world events as effectively as it does now.

How to make yourself very unpopular, written by the coalition!

Today's news is that the Home Office has decided to cut police pay, particularly for new recruits. Earlier this week, it was revealed that the police is suffering a huge decline in the young intake and thus the police forces are becoming older. In short, it looks like police recruitment is in for a rough time and there is no way that the current members of the police can see this scenario as anything other than they are getting screwed. A more Machiavellian outlook would be that this is a deliberate change that so happens to benefit companies such as G4s who just so happen to be significant contributors to the Conservative party coffers...

I will declare that I am not a police officer nor do I have any particular interests to defend on this issue, but I cannot help but imagine that the police feel pretty hard done by. Having covered for the Olympics thus not had much holiday, suffered pay freezes and pension cuts and worried about being on the front line at the next set of riots, I don't expect they feel particularly benevolent to the government right now. Traditionally, the Conservatives used to be able to count on a decent proportion of the police to vote for them. I doubt very much that is true any more.

In fact, I am pretty confident that the coalition has rather significantly lost of the vote of most of the civil service too. They feel pretty screwed over too. And with recent news that business leaders are worried about the anti-EU rhetoric, as is the US, and it looks like the coalition are fast running out of support from most quarters, including areas that would traditionally have been counted upon for some support. Like the Republican party in the US, they are in danger of running out of 'angry white men', or Euro-sceptics as they are otherwise known in the UK!

When they were in power Labour were terrible for making policies and promises specifically geared towards shoring up their political support rather than promoting good government. There are countless examples of this and the result were a lot of promises that were not funded. The coalition seems to have gone completely the other way and while this can be argued as possibly a good thing, if a bit politically suicidal, I would find it hard to argue that they are making good policies and winning support either. Without the support, they have almost no chance of implementing their policies, good or bad.

This behaviour from a politician is pretty hard to explain, after all, most shallow politicians are willing to sell their soul to win at politics right? Labour certainly did and it successfully kept them going for 13 years. So when one examines the behaviour of the coalition government and their apparent suicidal approach to gaining votes a rather disturbing pattern emerges. All those polices (cutting police pay, reforming the NHS, selling off national forests, privatising defence procurement, etc) all by amazing coincidence benefit significant contributors to the Conservative party. A coincidence? It is just too widespread to be written off as a conspiracy theory. If you take the view that privately the coalition knows it was left with an impossibly unpopular mess to fix, it can be easily imagined that those at the top have lost their motivation to win more votes. Thus we should ask what motivates them to shape government policy and endure the gruelling hours and criticism that results? A rather wealthy life after the general election in 2015 perhaps?

Before David Cameron became Prime Minister, he said that lobbying will be the next political scandal. That has yet to properly happen and so that particular cow will be milked for all it is worth before the game is up. Recent news coverage also states that MPs think they are not paid enough. I actually agree and I think these two issues are linked. Politicians should get a pretty generous pay from the state on the condition that they do not have second incomes or outside interests. If they are not prepared to accept this, then maybe they should accept, and the electorate should insist, that a career as an MP is not for them at that time. My sincere belief is that British politics would be in a better place when this happens. Sadly it cannot happen fast enough.

Not enough plebs

There can be no doubt that UK politics has entered a very divisive phase with the mainstream press and politicians daily engaging in class war. The Conservative Party is politically vulnerable on this front and so opposition politicians have shed any reluctance in detoxifying politics and are sticking it to the Government every chance they can get.

It seems to be a successful strategy with a Conservative Party unable to manoeuvre itself clear of the political broadsides. Andrew Mitchell's 'pleb' comments really should not have been much of a story. It can hardly be a surprise that current or past Government Ministers of all political shades think little of the 'lower' orders. Yet the whole Mitchell saga fuelled the political narrative of a leadership completely out of touch with the mainstream UK. With so many rich and public school educated people sitting in the Cabinet it seems incredible that Cameron along with the Conservative and Lib Dem leadership seem to totally lack the political survival skills that necessitate more women and 'working' class visibility at the top of Government, but that is what is happening.

At the other end of the scale of the Conservative Party, MPs such as Nadine Dorries, with a more 'humble' background are making a political pigs ear of things. Whether she is going to the jungle of Australia to 'spread politics' or to pocket the £40k fee for making an arse out of herself is open to debate, but it will undoubtedly fuel the belief at the 'upper ranks' of Conservative Party that those plebs within cannot be trusted either. Meanwhile they still have no real strategy of making the Conservatives look more electorable and so they can only pray for an economic miracle, throw out a bevy of clever sounding policies or just give in and make sure they get as much out of being in charge as they can before they are voted out in 2015. Civil servants can only wonder if the latter strategy is being pursued at times due to the incoherent and unpopular policies coming out of No.10, however, like the Labour and Lib Dem politicians they are keeping their heads down and letting the Conservative politicians take the flak.

Class politics has always being prevalent in British politics, but it seems to have reached new levels now. In part this is because there can be no doubt that those at the top are protecting themselves and their friends while enriching themselves at public expense. However, what has made the narrative really acidic is a belief by the UK electorate that the politicians are really making a hash of the UK economy. In recent weeks I have been meeting a lot of business men and women in the course of my duties and I have yet to meet any that thinks the Government knows what it is doing. If they do not believe things are going to get better then it is no wonder that the UK economy is not being led by a private sector recovery. In the meantime the electorate just reads the headlines and despairs.

Unfortunately the civil servants just feel the same way, backed by the fact they can see it happening first hand and with that level of de-motivation, do not expect Government to get any better. You reap what you sow and having castigated the civil service and marginalised those not in the exalted ranks, the politicians are fast running out of lower level support, vitally needed to make their policies happen.

The electoral reform that never was

Students of politics should do a case study into the formulation of the coalition agreement of 2010. The insights about how this unique (to the UK ) document came about and the results that we have seen from it make for fascinating study. For this post, I am going to focus on the failed referendum for electoral reform because I find it interesting and because the whole tale greatly amuses me.

Rewind back to the heady days of March 2010 with the election results in, Gordon Brown having agreed to step down and the Liberal Democrats living the dream of being the ‘king maker’. (Oh how things have changed since then, but I digress)  Top of the Lib Dem agenda was the issue of electoral reform, something they have wanted for so long. Opposite them was the Conservative Party, conservative by name, conservative by nature, entrenched by self-interest and thus not in favour of political reform. Personally I think our current First Past the Post System is a mess (mainly due to the control of the two big political parties and the way UK voters are wedded to voting in a tribal way) and so I was looking forward to the Lib Dems bringing in some much needed reform.

And then there was the huge mistake upon which the Lib Dems have had plenty of time to regret and which I, with years of experience at conducting political negotiations, instantly recognised as a mistake at the time. They sacrificed their strong position for a compromised position. The Lib Dems agreed to a referendum to a named alternative electoral system, the Alternative Vote. Why oh why were they so naïve as to have agreed to this? I can only admire the cleverness of the Conservative negotiation, they bluffed and took a gamble and it paid off. Generally speaking compromising during a negotiation can be a good thing, but you should never do so at the expense of your core objectives or ‘red line issues’ as we call it in the office.

What the Lib Dems should have done was to insist that the referendum question would be agnostic about which system to reform to, but would merely establish whether the UK population wanted electoral reform with the specific system to be decided at a later date, probably through a second referendum. They had the trump card, “agree to this or we shall go and speak to Labour about forming a coalition.” They could have said this and I am sure the Conservatives would have had no choice but to accept it. Instead, they handed the Conservatives the ability to criticise a political system that no one really wanted, it was just too easy! It stifled the debate and shut down the opportunity for proponents of the other potential systems to make their (much stronger) case. I can only imagine that these thoughts were going through Vince Cable’s mind when he described the Conservatives as “ruthless, calculating and tribal”. He knew they had blown it and he knew Lib Dem naivety several months back was the cause.

It was a much needed jolt in the arm for the Lib Dems, exposing one of their many political flaws. It also very pointedly represents the cause of their current problems, they look weak on the red line issues that matter to Lib Dem voters. The obvious lesson from this incident is not to agree to something you know that neither you nor your opposite number actually want. Unfortunately in learning this lesson, the Lib Dem blew the chance at the electoral reform that they had always dreamed of and thus along with it a genuine chance at cleaning up the current political mess that Westminster is in. Politics is a dirty and nasty game and people don’t often get second chances. For those who really wish things would be better, you will have to dream a little longer I am afraid…

The U-Turn Trap

Another day, another u-turn by the Government. I don't have a problem with u-turns providing there is a good reason to do so. Good policy is not made by stating publicly what will be done only to find out later the unintended consequences are too great to be acceptable. Good policy is made by quietly suggesting something should be done and then asking other people to look at that suggestion from all angles and then to reach a conclusion on whether it can and should be done and what should be done to reduce unintended consequences. I refer back to my earlier statement in this blog, "No decision is black and white", embrace this concept and seek to confront it and you are halfway there to producing a good policy!

Sadly, this is a case against the adversarial politics as practised in the UK. Standing up and shouting in parliament makes for good TV, but does not necessarily lead to good policies. Good policy is boring and painstaking work. It is detailed cost-benefit analysis backed by the best available information at the time. Sometimes this is not enough because in a democracy, not only should a policy make logical sense, it must be seen to make logical sense by those outside of government. U-turning on what appears to be a large chunk of the policies set out in your last budget (pasty tax, charity caps etc) and indeed on some much bigger policies made in the last two years (which aircraft for the aircraft carriers, the NHS and security reforms etc) is not exactly confidence inspiring!

No doubt many people might say that this is a consequence of coalition government and such debate and scrutiny is healthy. This is a point I would agree with, but there is a world of difference between exploring what is the right policy and that of stating what is the correct policy. To be fair to the coalition, they have tried to show that they are 'consulting' on policy formulation. Sadly this has been clumsy and too often the media has reported that these policies were firm policies and done deals. UK politics is all about shouting loudly and pretending unwarranted confidence on what are complex issues. True democratic leadership is not about dictating to people what will happen, but by convincing them that it will happen that way because it must happen that way to get the best result. True leadership in a democracy also about having the confidence to set out a broad objective which you then expose to scrutiny, including by people opposed to you, which you can then constructively harness to implement your stated objective.

In short, far too often those who comment on government policies are badly informed and do not understand the complex issues behind those policies. They are not helped by government refusing or unable to expose those facts. Sadly, those at the top of government also don't understand the issues and complexities behind their decisions leading to more u-turns, more criticisms and more defensive behaviours thus reducing confidence in them further. It is a vicious circle in which Ministers, parliamentarians, the media and senior civil servants are all complicit. Fixing this problem is not easy and unfortunately there is no sign of the political will to do so.

I leave you with a final point, politics is the only profession where you do not need formal qualifications or demonstrated competence in the subject matter to practice it! Should maybe the Prime Minister (or a delegated panel) conduct proper job interviews before appointing their Ministers? No other profession or business thinks this should not be done so why is politics different and yet our expectations of the political process so high?

Being in the civil service

So what is life like in the civil service? A frequent and natural question. I like the phrase civil service. It has a certain mystique about it, but as the phrase implies, civil servants are there to be civil and to serve! Ok, I will stop the silly jokes now, but there is an important point to be made here with that play of words.

To some people, we seem like a faceless and sinister breed able to shape government policy at will, manipulate clueless politicians and to backstab all enemies of good government policy in the name of the national interest in the style of that shown on the fantastic never grows old show, Yes Minister. To others we are feckless and lazy, love red tape, there to build our own little empires and to stop businesses from doing critically important things such as making lots of money. You won’t be surprised to hear me say none of that is true. Well except for the stopping businesses making money bit, but that is only when they are being bad people of course! By the way business leaders, a small tip, there are more important things in life than making lots of money! Like families, friends, health and hobbies… Ah what the hell, just call it having a life! And yes screwing people or the environment is a bad thing. Get a grip on your humanity/morality sometimes! (rant over)

It is well understood that civil servants do not join to make lots of money and in reality very few of them are power hungry. I work in an open plan office and so my response to the question at the top of this blog post is, “If you work in an open plan office and you look around at your co-workers, what do you see?” Lazy people, hard working people, smelly people, loud annoying people, nice people and so on. The civil servant environment is no different in this regards. What does make the civil servant environment different are the expectations placed upon us and the work we do.

The expectations of a civil servant

Do what is right A stupid, common sense statement no? So what happened with those casino bankers? What happened in the case of Trafigura who caused environmental catastrophe in the Ivory Coast? What about A4E who it is alleged their staff systematically worked to defraud UK taxpayers? Civil servants are not meant to be motivated by profit and so they are not motivated to do what makes the balance sheet or shareholder report look good at the end of the financial year, possibly at the expense of others. They make mistakes, as do everyone, but the goal is always to try and do what is right for the UK as a whole. This is important, we are paid for by the taxpayer, we serve them and we are told strategically how to do so by elected politicians representing the will of the UK public. (I will cover the issue of the democratic deficit in the UK in another post)

Treat your staff well If there is one thing I will say a civil servant is likely to do better (on average) than a private sector counterpart it is in managing staff fairly. This is not to say private companies cannot manage staff fairly or well, far from it. This is also not to say no civil servant badly manages staff, that would also not be true. The point I wish to make is that I have been taught as much of UK law as I need to know and I have been taught in no uncertain terms that discrimination, bullying, harassment and so on are unacceptable. In the pressure of a private sector office, these things can sometimes slip by and staff can be too scared talk, in the civil service these negative behaviours are much harder to get away with. Apart from line managers being extensively trained to avoid them, there are plenty of openly advertised routes for scared or bullied staff to raise their fears. A confident organisation is one that is not afraid to look for these problems and to confront them in a fair way. I sincerely believe that if you are from an ethnic minority, gay, a woman or disabled you (as a group) get well treated in the civil service and can compete equally on merit. This is right, the civil service must be seen to uphold best practice and to show the highest standards and where we get it wrong, we always look to fix it rather than brush it under the carpet. I will add a discordant note here that from what I have read in the Private Eye and from conversations with friends and strangers, the NHS is a shameful exception to this expectation from civil servants. No doubt other areas are equally bad, but I am picking on the NHS because it is such an open secret. From my personal experience, I have never had a bad line manager in the civil service. I have known of them, but never had one. Only my experience, granted but it does say something.

Be accountable Possibly one of the hardest things for a non-civil servant to understand. You want us to be transparent in our decision making and in our data? Fine, but understand that this is very time and resource consuming. I am not saying we should not do it, civil servants themselves believe that people must have confidence in the work they do, but when people complain that things takes so long to get done, you can bet that accountability is a big reason why. Need to make a decision on how to spend £100 million? That all needs to be documented, due diligence performed, everyone has to agree, including Ministers, and we have to spend a large chunk of our time answering damn fool questions from MPs in Parliament! All necessary in a democracy, but it comes at a cost and the private sector can move faster than us without this need for accountability, no doubt of that at all.

 Deal with complex problems Much has been made of dubious statistics showing that civil servants are paid more on average than those in the private sector. Since nearly all government departments seem to have outsourced the cleaning and catering work and anything else not judged as 'core business' what do you have left? People who are meant to run billion pound projects, experts in specialist fields and managers who might have to decide things like how much disability severely disabled children get or whether suspected terrorists should be detained for x days without charge. Do you really want to try to pay these people the minimum wage while still getting a good service? Historically, the civil service used to be known as the profession the rich clever kids with good public school education went to. This is no longer as true as it was (a good thing) and while civil servants don't join for the money, they do want to be paid a decent wage. They still need to do complex work dealing with life changing policies or complex technical systems and they know damn well that they can get paid more for this work in the private sector. They may not be rich public schoolboys any more with a good grounding in Latin and Greek, but making and implementing government policy remains a complicated task even if people don't always see it that way. Always remember, almost no government decision is truly black and white, money or effort put into one area or policy is money or resources not going somewhere else and sometimes it is not easy to get the evidence of which cause is more deserving.

Neutrality I am apolitical and I make a deliberate point of not supporting any political party. For me (not everyone) this is important. It does not matter whether I dislike those politicians in charge or whether I disagree with their policies, they were elected and it is my job to implement the policies they were elected on. Because I am not wedded to any political ideology (does not mean I don't have my own opinions) I do not feel compelled to defend any particular policy and I can be man enough to admit I was wrong if someone can come up with the evidence to prove it. And here I will take a pop at the very senior civil service, they are not adhering to this expectation of neutrality as rigidly as they should and the rot is spreading downwards. Successfully being promoted to the top of the civil service should be on the basis of competence and being able to tell Ministers that their policies (like everything else in government) will have certain unintended consequences. I cannot help but look at those at the top and feel that too many of them got there because they kept telling the people above them what they wanted to hear rather than the full truth. Many recent government policies have looked half baked and I think the senior civil service should share in the blame. There can be no doubt that the civil service has been politicised (both Labour and Conservatives are guilty) and this can be seen in the declining performance of government policies. In short, we have lost a precious commodity at the top of the civil service - leadership. I sincerely hope we get it back one day.

The work we do

The great thing about the civil service is that there is so much variety. I will not go into details about what I have done or where I have been, but I can only say that there are some experiences and work areas that money can't buy. I get the opportunity to influence government policy, I have the opportunities to influence foreign governments, I get to meet all sorts of interesting people and to do strange things, I help those who need it the most, I punish the corrupt and the venal (after due process), I see the unvarnished truth behind many newspaper headlines and all this in one career! Now is a demoralising and depressing time to be a civil servant, with politicians, business leaders and newspapers attacking us in all directions for their own agendas and to cover their own mistakes. But I will always have the opportunity to do something interesting and important. I don't have to sit in a depressing office somewhere crunching spreadsheets and doing mundane tasks so that some undeserving chief executive of the company can take home a nice fat bonus.

This for me is what being in the civil service is about. Many of my friends are accountants, lawyers, teachers, nurses, entrepreneurs, but when they talk about work it is as boring as hell more often than not. I have many more interesting work stories to tell and only my very closest friends vaguely know this, but the reality is that I cannot tell them. I can live with that, I am a civil servant and this is what I do. I don't take plaudits and I don't brag or boast or get more than a pat on the back for a job well done. I just go and do what is supposed to be important and the fact that I enjoy the work will just have to be its own reward.