| | By Mick James
This month we will
finally see the
installation of Gordon
Brown as prime minister,
a feat remarkable for
both its inevitability
and the fact that no-one
seems to want it to
happen apart from GB
himself. Or does he?
There’s a savage irony
to Gordon’s elevation:
as chancellor he was
gifted a thriving
economy, and a willing
electorate. Now the
economy is on a
knife-edge and the
electorate has turned
sour. Not only that,
but having defeated Tony
Blair by stealth, he
must essentially fight
him all over again in
the rejuvenated and
refreshed form of David
Cameron.
So the strategy for
Brown is clear: he needs
to perform a series of
dazzling U-turns while
essentially leaving
everything exactly as it
was. Rhetorically, this
is hardly an issue:
Brown is a past master
of reversing his own
policies while
proclaiming that he was
right all along, or
alternatively announcing
some minor bit of
tinkering as a major
initiative.
What it means for us
as a country is a rather
queasy period in which
public policy is
dictated by the need for
Gordon to be seen to be
doing something rather
than pursuing any
substantive goals.
Expect a rapidfire of
announcements during | |
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| | cash.
For the consultants,
a Brown premiership is a
mixed bag indeed.
Already we are seeing
the momentum of public
sector reform slowing,
although it’s clear that
the project is hardly
begun, let alone
finished. A “crackdown”
on consultancy
expenditure has the
double benefit of
looking like a savage
piece of belt-tightening
while not being
particularly expensive
or difficult to do. On
the plus side, the need
for a constant flow of
initiatives will
inevitably lead to
spin-off projects,
although these may prove
to be frustratingly
insubstantial in
practice.
Or will Brown bite
the bullet and actually
try to rein in the
public sector behemoth
he has helped create. On
the face of it, it would
be madness: the public
sector is not only now a
major electoral force in
its own right, it’s a
significant part of
Labour’s natural
constituency and still
packs a powerful trade
union punch. Tactics
which would be
no-brainers for a
private sector
organisation, such as
shipping low-value
transactional work to
India or even
introducing a modest
level of shared
services, are a
political minefield.
On the other hand,
Brown has little to | |
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| | lose, and public sector
reform is one of the few
areas where he could
really make a
difference. Take
inflation, for example:
everyone is waiting to
see how much they are
going to be battered by
the Bank of England
mallet as it tries to
get inflation down. But
public sector inflation
normally runs at about
double the headline
rate: the anomalous
conditions under which
public sector staff are
employed make them
simultaneously very
badly paid and very
expensive to hire:
already pension
commitments mean that
real spending in many
areas is falling even
while overall budgets
rise.
So Brown could become
the saviour of our jobs
and mortgages and bring
down inflation without
any credit going to
Number 11. Even better,
he could cut the legs
from under the new
chancellor by forcing
him or her to accept
overall levels of public
spending imposed, like
interest rates, by a
outside committee. The
new chancellor might
then discover how having
one’s hands tied can
become a very effective
route for imposing your
will on others.
Rather than ending a
phase of public sector
reform, we should
therefore be entering a
new and more radical
one. This would of
course, mean more
consultancy rather than | |
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| | less, offering another
easy political target.
The answer is for
government to find ways
to get more out of
consultants for less.
This means more than
“best practice” in
procurement or
engagement. It means a
fundamental leap in
understanding of how and
where consultants
contribute most.
Consultants are valued
for their brains rather
than their bodies, yet
all too often it has
been the latter that
government has hired.
And it’s brains Brown
needs: like Major before
him, he will suffer from
the problem that after a
decade in government his
party is running out of
credible ministerial
candidates, and thus the
supply of fresh ideas.
Any CEO faced with such
a crisis would
immediately look for
outside help (although
with the benefit of
being able to cloak
their actions behind
client
confidentiality).
Will Brown engage
with the consultancy
industry to revitalise
the nation? Or will he
simply use it as a
convenient political
football? I suspect
that we will know the
answer sometime within
those crucial first 100
days.
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| | Gordon’s first 100
days.
The key word for this
kind of activity is
“tackling”, a verb which
sounds determined but
commits you to nothing.
So we’ll see a lot of
“tackling” of things
like climate change,
which will probably take
the form of uncritically
lobbing even more money
at any initiative that
can be labelled “green”
or “renewable” or
“sustainable” no matter
whether it is
potentially useful or
criminally wasteful.
Of course, throwing
money at things is not
Gordon’s only tactic.
The first bit of
tackling has already
been announced: Brown is
to overhaul Britain’s
notoriously lax terror
laws, presumably on the
basis that those who
“hate us for our
freedoms” will not dare
to attack a country
where the police can
hand out 90-day prison
spells at will.
What’s depressing
about all this
“tackling” is that it
involves no new
thinking, no creative
deployment of new skills
and techniques. It’s
just the steady thud of
the legislative machine,
accompanied by the
endless outflow of | |
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