David Willetts is a member of the House of Lords
Governments can’t get elected saying: “The world is a dangerous place and the unpredictable happens more than ever – look at Covid and Ukraine. So it is silly to promise a detailed programme. But you can at least trust the instincts of this Party which will guide us as the unexpected happens – a belief in public services, a belief in cutting back the state, of close working with our European neighbours and our commitment to the special relationship with the US.”
Michael Oakeshott said that true Conservatism was keeping the ship of state afloat and fending off threats to it, not trying to reach a specific destination. But that won’t do as a political programme. If you stand still in the middle of the boxing ring you just get punched. So a key rule of modern politics is to keep moving. There are genuine grievances and problems to be tackled and you have to set about tackling them.
The most influential recent account of how to do this is Marianna Mazzucato’s, notably in her book The Entrepreneurial State. It is about government setting Challenges and then specific Missions to tackle them. She argues that giving public servants a mission for public services drives efficiency and boosts morale. It is reflected in Pat McFadden’s comment that Labour’s new targets, to be announced later this week are:
“to galvanise the government system because the truth is you need to drive the system if you’re going to deliver for the people.”
Mazzucato’s most powerful evidence of this approach is America.
Their government has an overwhelming national security mission which is to be the global leader in all key technologies. Their Mission is “no surprises”. It took its modern form after the shock off the Soviet Sputnik mission.
Once that is your government’s mission you create a powerful cocktail of defence and science spend that also drives extraordinary economic performance. Behind all the Jeffersonian rhetoric of sturdy individuals and the free market, which too many Conservatives take at face value, there is a Hamiltonian State pursuing national greatness through military and technological dominance.
That used to be the British approach too. Post-war Britain was not just a welfare state it was also, as David Edgerton neatly puts it, a warfare state, with large scale R&D to maintain national greatness.
That model disappeared during the 1960s and 1970s.
A British Government approach nowadays is going to seem feeble compared with that. I personally think that one which does rise to the global challenges we face arises from Climate change. It is “tackling climate change, ensuring resilience as it happens, and delivering in order to secure low-cost energy.”
Conservatives should be able to embrace that too because it includes resilience and security. One reason why Ed Miliband is one of the Government’s more effective performers is that he has a clear sense of what he is trying to do and why. He gets mission-led government.
However, the Government’s missions, to be fleshed out this week with very detailed targets, are a pale version of this approach and as such it faces several risks.
First, they are vulnerable to “mission-washing”.
A minister claims whatever they wanted to do anyway is key to delivering the mission. There is also the opposite problem which is, if anything more serious comes up – that can squeeze out other work which never gets priority but is necessary for any responsible Government. Already we hear the concern that the focus on NHS waiting times threatens mental health provision and investment in A&E.
Another problem with an exclusive focus on missions is that the Government can keep on doing other stuff but does not get credit for it. I remember one of the flooding crises – which hit us all too often now. The Coalition Government was failing to get any recognition for the investment it had made and an exasperated spin-doctor asked why these investments had never had any coverage, to which the responsible minister replied that it was never a priority so it was never allocated slot on the grid.
The Government’s new plans have another vulnerability: there needs to be rigorous assessment of how you are doing. That means one department can’t just be marking its own homework. Labour explained originally that missions were going to break down departmental silos. But now they look to have been captured by individual departments. The Mission Boards should be chaired by an independent assessor. It is bad to have departmental ministers marking their own homework.
Pat McFadden should be chairing the committees. There may be a moment when they take the opportunity to shift away from departmental capture to rigorous scrutiny of departments by outsiders. but we aren’t there yet.