One of the many challenges that Sir Keir Starmer will face if and when he becomes prime minister is what a Labour government is to do when there isn’t all that much money to spend.
After the final (or at least latest) abandonment of the £28bn green investment commitment, the Opposition’s policy offer at the minute is very thin indeed.
There’s no sign that this jeopardises Starmer’s path to Downing Street (governments lose elections, as the saying goes, oppositions don’t win them), but it will cause headaches should he get to Number 10. Manifesto commitments help to discipline MPs; the leadership can fairly argue that the party made a commitment, and even the most truculent backbencher was elected on it.
My own guess for what Labour does with no money is “mangle the constitution and ban things”, and things certainly seem to be going in that direction – for example, reports that it now intends to really ban fox-hunting. Much worse, however, is news that Sue Gray is apparently drawing up plans for “policy juries” (citizens’ assemblies by another name) to “bypass Whitehall” and make “key decisions”:
“Gray, who is in charge of the party’s preparations for government, said in her first interview in the role that plans were being worked on to involve the public directly in deciding contentious issues such as constitutional reform, devolution and where new houses should be built.
“She cited the “transformational” success of citizens’ juries in Ireland that had built consensus for constitutional changes including ending the ban on abortion and allowing gay marriage.”
At least this provides a sort of justification for Starmer not developing any policies: he wouldn’t want to pre-empt the sober judgment of the 99 men and women good and true, would he.
But if true, it’s a bleak indicator of how a Labour government would operate – and the idea that it will undermine the power of the permanent state is for the birds.
Our Irish columnist has previously covered the mixed record of citizens’ assemblies in Ireland: “Many of the proposals have gone nowhere or were rejected by the public, raising the question as to the use of resources and time.” There is no obvious reason why farming out policymaking to a randomly selected group of citizens should produce good policy.
But the conceptual problem runs much deeper.
Gray, an arch-mandarin, will well understand Sir Humphrey Appleby’s famous maxim: “permanence is power”. One of the biggest imbalances between ministers and the bureaucracy is that the former are seldom given more than a few years in a given brief – a problem that tends to get worse over the life of a government, as the original shadow teams move on and Downing Street ups the tempo of reshuffles. As I noted of the Post Office scandal:
“It takes time to get to grips with any brief, let alone drive forward policy effectively or, in this case, tune one’s political radar for potential dangers. Without that experience, ministers are inevitably more likely to rely on advice from the Civil Service or third-party reports…”
But at least in the current setup ministers have the baseline level of experience and expertise that comes from being a parliamentarian, however lacking that might sometimes be. A so-called citizen juror will be starting from scratch.
Per the Times, in Ireland: “They are asked to take evidence and deliberate on matters of national importance. They then examine studies and hear from ordinary people affected by the issue.” In practice, that means enormous power rests with the officials coordinating the evidence-taking. Who decides which “ordinary people” get a hearing? Which studies are examined?
This power is further compounded by the lack of partisanship. The combative style of parliamentary politics as its unedifying moments, but it at least ensures that proposals for change – especially on important questions of the sort Gray hopes to farm out – are subject to critical scrutiny and debate.
A citizens’ assembly has no such safeguard. Its members will surely have a broad range of political views, but no experience of articulating them and none of the support structure provided by party colleagues.
Given that psychologists can fairly reliably get people to deny the evidence of their own eyes if that’s what it takes to fit in with everyone else, Gray’s juries run the risk of falling swiftly into a snowballing consensus, the tone set by a few dominant individuals and whoever’s overseeing the independent, impartial, expert advice (your mileage may vary) such a body of random amateurs will need.
Perhaps this is simply a way of kicking awkward topics into the long grass. Starmer has wisely backed away from Lords reform following warnings from Labour peers, and the Shadow Cabinet is reportedly unenthusiastic about Gordon Brown’s awful constitutional reform plan. If citizens’ juries end up merely being an eye-catching way of substituting process for action, that will be the least-worst outcome.