Author: richardfjbrown

Who needs remote control?

It\’s commonplace (and generally inaccurate) to suggest that left and right are meaningless labels, that ideological differences between Labour and Conservative have evaporated, that we are all thatcherites now. Though the Coalition has outflanked Labour in its liberalism (it would be hard to imagine how to be more authoritarian, without introducing martial law), their economic policies are pretty dry, neo-con even.

But if clear blue water is visible in terms of content, an even more dramatic difference in style is becoming visible. Today, Ken Clarke is reported as criticising his colleagues for their tendency to leave ministers hanging when their policies prove controversial. Witness Andrew Lansley\’s \’pause to listen\’; witness Caroline Spelman\’s forced retreat from privatising forests.

The Coalition lacks the discipline and control mechanism of a strong Number 10 policy unit, endlessly second-guessing ministers and re-writing their policies. Ministers are free to announce pretty well anything they like – however radical, daring or plain mad it may be – but are also free to take the blame alone if they get it wrong. In this darwinian policy competition of rugged individualism, the fittest survive and the laggards are thrown to the wolves.

By contrast, for all its embrace of market capitalism, the Labour government stayed true to its collectivist roots. Even as Tony Blair became more and more presidential, the approach was stalinist: to borrown Bagehot\’s terminology, the \’dignified\’ trappings of collective cabinet government stayed in place, while the \’efficient\’ mechanisms of sofa government dictated policy throughout Whitehall.

Quod erat demonstrandum?

Some scenes from yesterday\’s march:

Near Westminster, two French tourists (wearing his\’n\’hers pastel anoraks that give the lie to their country\’s stereotype of fashion consciousness) wander into the demonstration from a side alley. With consistency that is admirable going on for perverse, the policeman who had had refused to let me use that alley as a short-cut refuses to let them back the way they came, so they have to join the crowd, weaving between GMB and student union banners as the sluggish current carries them along to Parliament Square.

Walking up Regent Street (past an unattacked Apple Store), the absence of cars and buses creates an eerie calm, broken only by distant sirens and the repressive chatter of helicopters\’ rotors. A tweedy woman walks past, shouting into a mobile phone her shrill shock at the disruption to her shopping trip.

North of Oxford Circus, a gaggle of protestors surround two fleeing figures in hoodies, shouting \’Police informer! Police informer!\’ and trying to photograph their faces. To prove their point, the hoodied figures mutter a few words to the police forming a cordon round Topshop, and are let through. Outside, vindicated, their pursuers leap up and down with glee. I am uncomfortably reminded of the old black-and-white photos of the denuciations of collaborators in post-war France.

We are family?

Martin Amis has been sharing his views on UK-Israel relations with Ha\’aretz.

\”I live in a mildly anti-Semitic country, and Europe is mildly anti-Semitic, and they hold Israel to a higher moral standard than its neighbors. If you bring up Israel in a public meeting in England, the whole atmosphere changes. The standard left-wing person never feels more comfortable than when attacking Israel. Because they are the only foreigners you can attack. Everyone else is protected by having dark skin, or colonial history, or something. But you can attack Israel. And the atmosphere becomes very unpleasant. It is traditional, snobbish, British anti-Semitism combined with present-day circumstances.\”

He\’s half-right. Israel does get a fair amount of stick from European lefties, but I have never bought the argument that this is a matter of anti-Semitism. Rather, it is a result of conscious or sub-conscious prejudice in our expectations of other middle-eastern states. We expect savage behaviour from them (and, sad to say, are all-too-often proved right). It\’s part of what the late Edward Said would have seen as the \’orientalising\’ narrative, the depiction of the East as a mysterious \’other\’, the home of Kipling\’s \”lesser breeds without the law\”.

We do hold Israelis to higher standards, but because of familiarity rather than prejudice. We see them as displaced Europeans, rather than Asians, so hold them to what we fondly still suppose to be European standards of behaviour. Our criticisms of Israeli behaviour are an inverted tribute to our kinship.

The man who waters the workers\’ benefits?

My copy of PCS View, my trade union\’s magazine, arrived through the door on Wednesday, promising to \”fight the cuts\” before they had even been announced, and condemning the Government for \”making ordinary people pay for the economic crisis\”.

All fair enough, I thought, and directed the magazine towards my recycling bin, together with the assorted flyers and leaflets that accompanied it. Then I stopped and looked at some of these. Most were offering financial services of one sort or another. For example, PCS+, directly affiliated to the union, was offering life insurance. For a mere £12.60 per month, I would receive a payout of £7,500 on my death, or a cashback of £3,301 if I survived till I was 70. Great, except that for the same premium Aviva would insure my life for £75,000 – 10 times the value! – and the cashback would actually represent £1,000 less than had been paid in, even ignoring inflation. \”For many people\”, the blurb read, \”an unexpected death could mean financial disaster.\” Especially if coupled with life insurance from PCS+.

Scottish Friendly were also advertising their services, and in particular their 15-year MoneyBuilder plan – essentially a \’with profits\’ savings plan, like those wonderful Equitable Life schemes. For an initial investment of £10 per month, rising to £20 per month by year 6, you would receive a guaranteed lump sum of £2,959 after 15 years – only a few hundred pounds less than your total investment of £3,240. A four per cent annual growth rate, which seems pretty optimistic in these times, might even earn you all your money back (though inflation would have significantly reduced its value while Scottish Friendly sat on it).

And I thought that trade unions were meant to fight against the exploitation of workers, not to collude in it.

Papal bull

It may be a slow news week, but I have been finding it hard to understand the sheer volume of media coverage of the Pope\’s visit. I appreciate that he is the leader of one of most important world religions, but can that really be worth so much newsprint in our – allegedly – secular society?

This afternoon, I had an epiphany. This isn\’t really about the Pope. Like African conflicts during the cold war, this is a proxy battle in our very own \’culture wars\’. On the one side are the evangelical rationalists, Dawkins et al, to whom the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church represent something atavistic and unsavoury, slouching into the 21st Century dragging medieval convictions (and the taint of negligence in relation to child abuse) behind them.

On the other side, are conservative pundits and newspapers, seizing on the Pope\’s denunciation of secularism to amplify their fears of Christmas being replaced by \’winterval\’ in town halls up and down the land, of celebrities taking the place of deities, of moral relativism rampant, and of cross-wearing banned by petty bureaucrats.

As in the USA, the tone adopted by the culture warriors is shrill, and neither side is really interested in the other\’s views as anything other than a target for denunciation and derision. This is a dialogue of the deaf.

Careless whispers

Reporting on the resignation of William Hague\’s special advisor this afternoon, the Evening Standard alludes, censoriously and primly, to \”rumours that had been circulating on the internet [about the nature of their relationship]\”.

Those will be the same rumours that were reported by the Standard diary (on the pretext of reporting on a Freedom of Information request) last week, and (in the guise of reporting on a \’row between bloggers\’) in earlier editions today, will they? Yes, I believe they will.

De-commissioned

When I began working for the Audit Commission in 1994, the ten year-old organisation was on a roll. The investigation into Westminster City Council\’s gerrymandering scandal was making headlines, local authority performance indicators were being published for the first time, and reports on issues such as youth offending and regeneration seemed as critical of a tired Conservative government as they were of local authority and health service practice. With its recital of what now sound like tired or even trite mantras – \’customer focus\’, \’joined up government\’, \’evidence-based management\’ – the Commission was the very model of modern managerialism.

Despite this rising profile, worries persisted about the Commission\’s future under a Labour government. John Smith had pledged their abolition in 1992, but contact had gradually been established, first through back channels and then more openly with Frank Dobson, then shadow local government minister. Jack Dromey still referred to the Audit Commission as \”the accountancy wing of the Conservative Party\”, but his tone became jocular rather than threatening.

Slowly, it became clear that New Labour had no intention of abolishing the Audit Commission. Far from it, the government-in-waiting wanted to expand, and radically alter, the Commission\’s remit. With the exception of flagrant misbehaviour, as witnessed at Westminster, the Commission\’s performance reporting was traditionally as dry and detached as its audit judgements. Performance indicators were hedged around by caveats about local circumstances and local discretion, and national value-for-money reports made generic recommendations, the pill often sweetened by sideswipes at the policy framework set by central government.

New Labour had other ideas. The Audit Commission would become a vital tool in the crusade to improve public services (or Stalinist control-freakery, depending on your perspective). Under the Best Value regime, then the Comprehensive Performance Assessment and Comprehensive Area Assessment regimes that replaced it (inspect-o-rrhoea?), the Audit Commission and its emissaries would sit in judgement on elected local authorities, awarding them star-ratings, or red or green flags on the basis of their performance.

The argument that the Commission was simply publishing information, allowing local people to set their own priorities and their own criteria in judging council performance, providing fuel for accountability, vanished. The man from the Audit Commission knew what was good, from Lampeter to Lambeth, and would judge local authorities against these benchmarks.

Michael O\’Higgins, the Audit Commission\’s chief executive, spoke last week of the irony of the Commission\’s abolition, when local authority performance has improved (with the unspoken assumption that the Commission has been responsible for this improvement). A deeper irony still is that, if the Audit Commission had not so enthusiastically embraced a chance to operate as shock troops for the New Labour revolution, they might not today be being sacrificed on the altar of localism.

In the eye of the beholder

Prince Charles\’ letter to the Prime Minister of Qatar, published this week, certainly captures its author\’s voice, veering at times into self-parody. In one faux-tentative passage, the Prince argues that traditional architecture is preferred \”because it enhances all those qualities of neighbourliness, community, human-scale [sic], proportion and, dare I say it, \’old-fashioned\’ beauty.\”

The last word, underlined by hand in the letter, made me think of another man with a forceful personality, strong views on architecture, and a conviction that shallow functionalism in design can marginalise and undervalue beauty. Indeed, when undertaking a commission for the last government, this grandee complained that civil servants persistently tried to censor all mention of \’beauty\’ from his report.

I don\’t think either of them would thank me for the observation, but Prince Charles\’ fellow beauty-seeker is, of course, none other than Richard Rogers, the architect whose Chelsea Barracks scheme the Prince was seeking, successfully as it turned out, to derail.