The argument goes that giving public servants a ‘mission’ for public services drives efficiency and boosts morale. But this Government’s missions, to be fleshed out this week with detailed targets, are a pale version of this and so faces several risks
She is right to focus on how Government can be made more effective. If Labour lose the next election it will be because they have found it hard to deliver their promises.
This is the minimum necessary to avoid a real financial crisis in higher education. The real debate is how much more universities need to offer a good service to their students and what can be expected from them in return.
They face the eternal dilemma of British politics: voters want a big welfare state, but aren’t willing to vote for the taxes to fund it.
Different Prime Ministers have their own ways of discharging their heavy responsibilities. It is rather like different actors with a wide range of interpretations of a great Shakespearean role.
Raising the growth rate of a mature democracy with lots of well-organised lobby groups involves winning some difficult battles. The Government is not picking them.
If we want to be able to argue for fiscal discipline and possibly tax cuts it will be very hard to do so credibly if the Official Opposition votes against the first actual public spending cut to come before Parliament.
Some live in places sending the majority of their young people to university. That is the Conservative reality. It is a pity when sometimes the rhetoric does not recognise it.
There is widespread frustration amongst peers who do try constructively to amend legislation that governments with large majorities then reject most of the amendments.
Economic dynamism is particularly hard to deliver in a mature democracy richly endowed with interest groups, many of which are organised to try to stop things happening.
We can’t keep on boosting the incomes of pensioners above inflation and widening the gap between them and working age families; Labour must be willing to cut back radically on prolonged legal processes choking development.
“We believe that cutting taxes on young people and expecting some community service from people when they start collecting their pension is a fair deal across the generations.” If only.
Our sectoral comparative advantage is overwhelmingly in services. In addition, we are world-class in some inherently disruptive new general-purpose technologies.