| | 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 | |
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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 lose, | |
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| | 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, | |
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| | mean more consultancy
rather than 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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| | of announcements during
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 cash.
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