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.

When computer games show the political past or the potential future of political interaction

I have always enjoyed playing computer games, particularly those that force you to think tactically or have a curious twist. Lately I have been thinking about a couple of games that provoked some interesting thoughts.

Let’s start with the past and my favourite game of all time which is Rome Total War. For those not familiar with the Total War style of games, these are strategy games played on the PC where you build and maintain empires and armies and get the opportunity to fight battles with those armies in real time. They are many games of this ilk such as Civilisation, but they way the Total War dynamics is crafted by the game developer has always been interesting to me. In Rome , they really introduced the concept of not only capturing towns by diplomatic or military means, but also in having to hold on to it. This could be done by garrisoning it, building cultural buildings such as temples or circuses to keep the population happy or rather more chillingly by simply massacring everyone. For experienced players, they soon learnt that logistically it was far easier to massacre everyone as it freed up troops to use to capture the next town. While Roman times was pretty brutal, this is perhaps a rather excessive game dynamic and so the Total War team made this much less of a ‘sensible’ option for their later titles.

This brings up the interesting social question, how many gamers took the lazy way out and used the massacre option more than they ‘morally’ should? What does this tell us about people or more pertinently political leaders today? While massacring settlements is hardly a popular or common way to do things these days (occasional and vicious hot spots in the world not included) if you were a party leader and it was easier to destroy your opponents with lies than by winning the intellectual argument, would you not take it? All is fair in love and war and it can be argued that democracy is simply war conducted by more civilised means. In war, there is no such thing as cheating to win (although treatment of civilians and prisoners is meant to be above this and held to a higher standard) and thus it cannot be denied that any political group would be tempted to take shortcuts to their political objective. In the Rome Total War game, you were slightly punished for being so bloodthirsty by having lower popularity ratings, but then if you ruled a huge empire with a large army available this was hardly a deterrence. So what deters democratic leaders of today? How can a proper democratic system punish cheaters? Sadly, the answer would seem to be “not very well”.

Let’s look at a more modern and strangely fascinating game that I have got into called DayZ. This game is very simple, you find yourself on the coast of a small country infested with zombies and other human players will be around too. There is no government, there are no rules and you have to find weapons, food and medical supplies and simply survive. This is a socially fascinating game because you soon learn that forget the zombies, an awful lot of people are willing to murder you for the contents of your backpack! Some people are willing to club together, pool resources and help you fight off the zombies, but you never know which type of person you will encounter and they may even stab you in the back later on. So what would happen in the real world if there was a similar break down in social order? Would most people get together or would a huge number be willing to do anything to survive including overriding social taboos such as murder? Be aware that this game is a little unusual, once you die, you have to start all over again losing any progress you have made. While not comparable to taking a life, there is a definite sense of loss.

It is an interesting and chilling concept that this is how people may choose to act and it is hard to deny that in the right circumstances DayZ could represent a realistic social dynamic. The important factor here is that the gamers do start from a position of not having a social group or community that they belong to. Sex, race, nationality or creed are irrelevant here. It is quite telling that those game servers where people co-operate with each other the most are the ones where gaming clans (let’s call them a voluntary community) have consciously set themselves up and only members are invited. If you are not a part of that community, the odds are high that you will get shot if the zombies don’t get to you first. Does this perhaps sound rather familiar?

Of course these are computer games free from moral and social constraints and so we should not read too much into them. But in these games normal people can make vivid choices and sometimes those choices can translate to real life. When playing in online games, I have learnt to avoid Russian servers for those games where teamwork is required. I cannot explain why, but for some reason the Russian servers are absolutely terrible for teamwork. Is it cultural, social? I cannot say, only that it is a pattern repeated again and again. Take away all constraints, give people the choice of being nice or nasty and too often nasty wins.

Does this mean people are not naturally willing to be nice to each other and so extensive social conditioning is what is needed to keep humanity flowing? Or does everyone just like to let off steam once in a while?

The Olympic Legacy

And so following a very successful Olympics, which despite my usual disinterest I actually rather enjoyed, the political conversation has now shifted towards a nebulous concept – the Olympic legacy. Needless to say, politicians of all shades will be promoting this with the full knowledge that they are unlikely to be held to account for its delivery. This is all about perceptions, not substance and so words are cheap and will no doubt be plentiful on this topic. Nonetheless, the Olympics are likely to have a real impact on the political scene and so it will be worth speculating as to what this actual impact will be. As for it influencing how Scottish voters will vote in the referendum in 2013, or how the UK votes in the election presumably in 2015 there is only one appropriate response – It is the economy stupid!

The first thing of course has to be the ‘feel good’ factor. As mentioned in a previous post, all politicians of all shades try to jump onto major sporting events to try to get the electorate to feel better about them and the world in general. No doubt Cameron’s promise to maintain the existing level of sports funding for Olympic sport is doing exactly that. Milliband’s call for an all-party consensus is another example. However, it does appear that the coalition (and Labour) has very much appeared to have been left out with the media giving lots of print and air time to Boris Johnson. Politically, it very much appears that Johnson has benefitted, with negligible benefits for anyone else in politics although there is a possibility the whole class war thing may benefit some fringe political commentators. From a political perspective, this implies that the power and momentum behind the London Olympics has very much stayed within the London power base, national politics has been very much marginalised. Is this a possible indication of future political power shifts from national to local level? Or is London , as always, unique and so this cannot be seen to be representative of the nation as a whole?

One definitely positive message that came out of the Olympics was the sense of ‘civic spirit’ particularly surrounding the volunteers. Maybe Cameron can take some satisfaction that the Olympics has demonstrated better than anything else, what his concept of Big Society is all about. It will be very obvious that the Olympics was a success that involved minimal government intervention (the call up of the military and the huge amounts of cash pumped in notwithstanding!). However, Cameron will have to be very careful before he makes this claim. GB managed to pull in a record number of medals. But then everyone knows that this is in part because there has been a real push to properly fund Olympic success. While the volunteers and the athletics may have made the whole event really uplifting, it is clear that this spirit can only flourish where properly supported. Big Society as a concept has failed to prove that it is about harnessing and supporting this sort of spirit rather than being more about trying to make cuts and shift the burden onto volunteers or charities. The old adage, “you get what you put in” has very much run true of this Olympics and the Conservatives are going to struggle to get this message across. Simply put, the Conservative brand has not been detoxified and the Olympics may well make the electorate further associate cuts as causing long term damage. The whole argument around the sell-off of playing fields is a very poignant part of this narrative.

On a less positive note, the Olympics has seemed to have encouraged the media to give lots of print to a sort of ‘class war’ and focussing on the number of medals won by people from private schools. This debate is highly divisive and I fear leaving a sour after-note. The reasons for so many medals being won by privately educated people are relatively clear and easy to understand, any solutions for correcting this imbalance are not. As with anything in politics, whenever someone is peddling black and white ‘truths’ the reality is that they are expressing biases and opinions. Nothing is simple to solve even if the problem is easy to understand. It would be a pity for the Olympic legacy to descend into a destructive narrative about the ‘toffs’ winning the medals rather than the focus being on how to improve sports and sporting achievement in the UK in a way that is accessible to everyone. While the coalition may be rightly castigated for having a cabinet widely seen as elitist, this does not mean the Olympic medal holders should be seen within the context of this debate.

If people do not want to see the Eton and Oxbridge brigade dominating the top of government, rather than whinging about it and trying to arbitrarily restrict entry, focus the narrative on improving access from the bottom so than anyone of ability who works hard has a chance. This is true of education, of the Olympics and pretty much any other area of life. If you really want to damage or properly criticise the ‘millionaire’s cabinet’, nothing is more damaging than a credible discussion about their lack of competence. The USA and China ruthlessly focus on supporting competence and success rather than class in their politically polar opposite quest for Olympic glory. The legacy that the British nation has to take away from the Olympics is that it needs to do the same in its own British way. It does not need to be massively state controlled ( China ) or fully capitalist ( USA ) as the GB athletes and volunteers quite vividly demonstrated.

A bloody awful idea

Worried about politicians not being able to implement their policies properly? Need government departments to improve their performance? Well the latest idea seems to be to routinely sack those at the top of their profession and replace them with people who know even less! Today’s story in the Independent is what caught my eye:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ministers-plot-end-to-civil-service-neutrality-7995033.html

I am fully willing to concede that numerous top civil servants have done a poor job in many respects. However, some of them are brilliant and the ones you don’t hear about are the ones making government work despite all the handicaps thrown their way. Part of the problem is that the top of the civil service has become increasingly politicised. So making them even more political seems like a rather counter-productive move. More worrying still, this gives Ministers even more power at the top of their department, but does little to ensure that they receive good service and excellent advice. In short, it is more power with decreasing accountability.

I think the myth that the civil servants block ministers from implementing policy is exactly that, a myth. I feel an important quote coming on so here goes:

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Simply put, government as a whole is failing to implement its policies because departments are not being run properly, policies are not being scrutinised or tweaked effectively and implementation is inadequately monitored. Bringing in another layer of political management is not going to solve the problem. More apolitical and competent technocrats is what is really needed plus reform of the system so that political ideology and corruption do not override common sense. It short, it is the politicians’ (of the last three decades) bloody fault because they are the ones who have created the structural and cultural weaknesses which has resulted in a poor civil service trying to implement bad policies, in an unfavourable environment with inadequate resources or skill sets.

The Independent article stated that Ministers were looking to the US , New Zealand and Australia as good examples. Not good choices. As anyone with the knowledge of the US can tell you, the bureaucracy is huge and every time there is an election or political crisis, government effectively shuts down. My limited knowledge of the Australian and New Zealand system indicate they have similar problems. Political decisions are too frequently made in these countries on a short term basis and with a very partisan bias. That is not how the UK wanted to do things which is why this model was never imported previously. At least the US Congress and Senate scrutinises these political appointments and they can get a very bumpy ride when things go wrong. The UK does not have this separation of powers and so such appointees are barely politically accountable. Until Parliament has more clout and independence from Downing Street , this transfer of unaccountable power would be simply frightening and likely to lead to horrendous problems.

More politicisation of the civil service is not an answer to our current problems. Neither is anything proposed by Francis Maude!

Thinking the unthinkable, going GOCO

Cast your mind back to the 80s or 90s or even early 2000 (if you are old enough to remember that far which sadly I am). Now imagine that a politician said the following thing, “Let’s privatise defence.” Granted, there was a cold war on a while back, but can you imagine the hostile reception that such an idea would have got? Handing over weapons and national security to greedy, profit hungry arms dealers, never!

Fast forward to today and defence companies are very much part of the scenery in defence. This is true for many countries and there are many logical reasons for this. Yet, the UK is willing to go one step further than anyone else and seems willing to contemplate the idea of privatising defence procurement itself. The buzzword is Government Owned, Contractor Operated. Here is what RUSI has to say about this:

http://www.rusi.org/news/ref:N501674F3225F2/

http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/GOCO_Briefing.pdf

What caught my eye (apart from the bloody good questions asked in the briefing paper) was the list of people contributing to this discussion. Not only is the former head of defence procurement and other ex-MOD people there, so are significant captains of defence industry. Quite remarkably, there is a not very subtle message being put out here from a group of people that shouldn’t necessarily agree on this issue, “Are you crazy?!” This is very much a shot across the bows for Bernard Gray, a political appointee who was made head of Defence Equipment and Support by David Cameron. He has always openly stated that defence procurement is a mess, it needs fixing and he sees the private sector as the means by which this can happen.

In the best traditions of Yes Minister I am going to say that he is both right… and wrong!

Let’s first give Mr Gray his due. Defence procurement is a political nightmare. Despite what the media says, this is not because the civil servants in defence procurement cannot do their jobs properly, but rather because the whole system prevents them from doing a good job. It is too easy for politics to derail even a well run defence project many of which face significant technical challenges simply due to the nature of the business. There are countless stories to demonstrate this. Mr Gray has done a good job of diagnosing the problems. His medicine, however, has not been subjected to trials of any kind by anyone else and if it goes wrong the resulting mess would be horrendous. I will not go into all the issues that can arise because the RUSI briefing paper raises these critical questions.

What I will say though is that Mr Gray has failed to answer the critical question of how do you take the politics out of defence procurement? The answer may well be that you cannot, but expecting a private company to be able to manage or even to stand up to political forces seems naïve. How would a failing company even be properly punished? The government will never be able to properly transfer the risks associated with defence or national security. Any risk transfer can only be temporary. The whole G4s security issue with the Olympics and my recent post about PFIs repeatedly emphasise this point. Like the past failures to manage NHS finances through the private sector or safely privatise the rail network, the results of such experiments are that people will die. Network Rail was dragged into court and fined, will the same happen to the GOCO when soldiers are killed due to faulty equipment? The banks are too big to fail, well so is defence.

This really is a risky experiment and Mr Gray is quite willing to say that we must run some risks if we are to gain the benefits. My question is whether the risks associated with going GOCO are worth the anticipated benefits? It may well be that some of the benefits can be delivered by a less riskier option. Sometimes being sure that you will get a ‘good enough’ solution is a much better strategy that striving for a brilliant solution that you have no certainty if it will work, especially when people’s lives are on the line. This philosophy is what often separates the public sector from the private. Some things are just too important to fail, while a proper market is all about success and failure in order to thrive. Mixing the two is always risky, a lesson the civil service has learnt, but one that politicians all too often forget or ignore.

This may sound like a boring way to approach problem, but I tend to find that good government is exactly that, boring.

Deception and taxes

Let's start with a fun quote from Machiavelli:


Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain. 
Niccolo Machiavelli 


Do you agree with this statement? So when the Treasury Minister David Gauke states that it is morally wrong to pay cash in hand is he perhaps stating the obvious and that many people are willing to deprive the Government of those precious tax revenues? Perhaps even the attitude from many people likely to be a resounding "sod off you hypocrite!"


I don't think this really is much of an issue on the Govermment's radar at all. It is not a new issue and it has been something that has been known about and managed as best as possible over decades. It is claimed that this low level tax avoidance is costing the Government £2 billion a year. Considering that the major tax avoidance wheezes are being done by corporations and rich individuals and this is costing the Government trillions. That is where the attention should be going. 


So why is this non-story suddenly newsworthy? Time for another quote from Machiavelli:


One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived. 
Niccolo Machiavelli 


This cash in hand story is only to deflect attention from the whole issue of corporation tax avoidance. Can we really blame rich people and corporations from seeking ways to reduce their tax bill? It is a simple fact that no one likes paying taxes. They do so because they have to and hopefully because they believe it is the right thing to do because they directly and indirectly benefit from it. Yet what if they feel that they do not benefit and that governments of all political colours squanders it and is too corrupt to manage it properly? How resentful must those people feel to pay those at the top who enrich themselves and their friends/political donors at public expense?

The whole issue of tax avoidance is squarely the Government's fault. It happens because it allows tax avoidance of all shades to happen through poor or slack legislation and enforcement. Furthermore, people don't trust politicians and they definitely don't trust them to spend the money wisely. Thus a political atmosphere of resentment is being created and the only way people can fight back is to withhold their taxes through covert means. Protest against the government is meaningless and worse still risks people losing their jobs, violence is an extreme method of protest and withholding your taxes overtly gets you put in jail.

I do not claim tax avoidance is directly linked to political protest, but I do claim that a subconsious culture is being created where those who can avoid tax do and don't feel guilty about it because they don't feel the Government deserves their money. It should definitely be an issue of concern to the Government and I fear obviously hypocritical comments by Treasury Ministers is not going to improve the situation. Everyone knows who the real tax avoiders are and it is not those builders/plumbers/decorators.

Bread and circuses

Many will be familiar with the old trick of the Roman emperors to dispense free bread and to hold circuses to maintain their hold on power. To a lesser extent a similar idea remains in use today through the use of big sporting events. It is well documented that politicians try to use major sporting achievements such as winning world cups to boost the ‘feel good feeling’ in voters. So it must be rather depressing for the coalition as they really do not seem to be having much luck on that front this year.

The only hero they have at this stage is Bradley Wiggins. The England football team did not do anything spectacular, Murray didn’t win Wimbledon and now the whole Olympics thing is becoming a political mess. And the Queen’s diamond jubilee did so well at getting things warmed up, what a waste! Brits are perhaps a particularly cynical lot and hard to please, but it cannot escape political notice that far from ‘distracting the masses’ the Olympics are displaying in all its ugly glory the nasty side of corporate sponsorship and the perils of outsourcing. All at a time when MP expenses scandals remain fresh, with Levenson constantly chipping away at the political foundations in the background and with the Libor scandal in full flow. No wonder the economy is not growing, the British voter does not have much to be confident about right now.

The secret to economic growth these days is not really anything to do with actually making things, investing in the future or through the use of money making the world a better place. No, it is all about confidence. People need to feel sort of good about their lot, willing to spend money in the knowledge they will get more of it and feel a desire to buy things with that money. Any basic economics course will teach its students that confidence, a very intangible thing, is the most important concept in any economy. Money has value because people believe it does. A company can make huge profits yet go to the wall if people lose confidence in it. The same is true for governments and any currency such as the Euro or US Dollar. Thus even though the Olympics being in London is thanks to Labour not the coalition or Boris, Cameron can be seen desperately talking it up with outlandish claims of how much better off Britain will be thanks to the Games. You only need to look over towards Greece and the well documented failure how hosting their Olympics failed to improve their economy, to know that Cameron must be getting pretty desperate to make those sorts of claims! Yet the reality remains that the British political leadership, along with European leaders, are failing to show leadership, improve confidence and thus inspire their voters to generate economic growth. Cameron needs the circus to distract the mob, slip into the shadow of sporting heros and get people feeling good about things again. Will it work?

I suppose Cameron could always stand up and imitate Blair for the party faithful with a rallying cry of, “confidence, confidence and confidence!” Such an intangible concept, with no firm rules on how to obtain it and yet so important and its effects easily seen. Even if the Olympics are a success, I suspect it will be very much perceived that politics played little in achieving this and all the other negative issues will overwhelm any political benefit to be gained.

Looks like bread and circuses on their own are not quite enough. But of course, the Roman emperors had the Praetorian Guard to intimidate the population, thank goodness the army won’t be doing the same for the Olympics…