Who’s In Charge Here? 17. The Chancellor of the Exchequer
Can it really be true that the traditional resident of 11 Downing Street is more powerful than his more prominent next door neighbour, the prime minister? He could well be, and for one simple reason: the chancellor runs the economy, and the economy is everything. Hence the famous American election-winning phrase: ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’
Centralisation within the executive is high in the UK, so the lead actors are the prime minister, the chancellor and the Treasury. And it’s the chancellor who decides how much money is going to be spent, and where. He is, arguably, the overlord of all things domestic: from pensions to policemen, from transport to trade policy. He can exert control over every government department and every single minister.
A previous chancellor, Robert Lowe, described the office in the following terms: "The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man whose duties make him more or less of a taxing machine. He is entrusted with a certain amount of misery which it is his duty to distribute as fairly as he can." This gives some of the indication of the impact the chancellor can have on everyday life in the UK.
Sometimes the chancellor can find their popularity amongst their colleagues and rest of their party fading, and it is said that many previous incumbents have not relished the task they face in the job. But a chancellor faces the ultimate responsibility for financial and economic control, with a unique opportunity to grasp the reins of government - and to challenge the authority of the prime minister.
The prime minister and chancellor have often been perceived as rivals, at the twin peaks of politics and finance, and it is true that a strong chancellor can demoralise a weak prime minister. Back in the 1950s Harold Macmillan had helped to undermine the prime minister Anthony Eden after the Suez war, and ended up taking over from him. Later, Denis Healey under PM James Callaghan was visibly the ‘iron chancellor’ and bore the blame for Labour’s often unpopular policies. Kenneth Clarke was a dominant figure, and a master at preserving his reputation during John Major’s troubled premiership, so much so that Clarke retains an important role in the present government, as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.
It has often been hard to know how far the chancellor, rather than his officials, was responsible for policies - particularly when a blunder was made. The biggest historical mistake over the last century, the return to the gold standard in 1925, was always blamed on the chancellor, a certain Winston Churchill. In fact he tried to resist it, and was overwhelmed by almost complete unanimity within the Treasury and the Bank of England. It was only after years of secrecy when this became apparent.
One part of the chancellor's key roles involves the framing of the annual Budget, which is summarised in a speech to the House of Commons. Traditionally the budget speech was delivered on Budget Day, usually a Tuesday in March, in conjunction with the end of the tax year. From 1993, the Budget was preceded by an annual 'Autumn Statement', now called the Pre-Budget Report, which forecasts government spending in the next year and usually takes place in November or December.
By tradition, the chancellor has been allowed to drink whatever he or she wishes whilst making the Budget Speech. This includes alcohol, which is otherwise banned under parliamentary rules. Previous chancellors have opted for whisky (Kenneth Clarke), gin and tonic (Geoffrey Howe), or brandy and water (Benjamin Disraeli). More recent Chancellors have, disappointingly, opted for water only.
Like with the prime minister, the overall power of the chancellor depends on the personalities involved. Gordon Brown, for all his failings once he became Prime Minister, was a very powerful chancellor. Too powerful, according to some at the time. He became the longest-serving chancellor since the Reform Act of 1832, and from the start it was clear that he was a genuine rival to the prime minister, having originally been Tony Blair’s closest ally.
Brown went about making the Treasury - and therefore himself - more powerful as soon as he got in. One way he did this was by changing the recruitment policy. Instead of letting the civil service machine employ staff for him, he got the Treasury to do it separately. They only gave jobs to the most able candidates they could find.
More than any chancellor since Macmillan in the 1950s, Gordon Brown could challenge the prime minister, supported by his power base of loyal MPs. His Treasury colleagues reckoned he spent more time on political activity than on running finances, and competing leaks from the rival headquarters provoked a perpetual tension between Numbers Ten and Eleven Downing Street.
Brown grew more dominant as other ministers were losing their influence in cabinet. In preparing his budgets he was more ruthless in controlling the big-spending departments than his predecessors had been, ending their right to allocate money as they wished. Brown’s domination did not necessarily imply any weakening in Blair’s power, but between them they tended to limit the scope of other ministers in cabinet.
Blair’s increasingly presidential behaviour and the constant media attention on Number Ten had been a constant reminder to Brown that he had lost out on his first ambition to be prime minister. However, his chance was to come in 2007, when Blair finally relinquished his decade-long grip on the duties of the PM. However, Brown’s prosaic and systematic speeches were a signal of a leadership that was to be as unmemorable as much as it was short-lived. He was never able to compete with Blair’s agile, showy rhetoric, and succeeded only in leading Labour in 2010 to their worst electoral result since 1983.
Of course, the person now enjoying this role as (arguably) the most powerful man in Britain is the aristocratic Rt. Hon. George Gideon Oliver Osborne MP. For all his myriad faults, Tony Blair was always able to depict Labour as ‘the servants of the people’, in distinction to the Tories. ‘We still think [the Conservatives are] the party of government,‘ he told the Labour Party Conference in 2004. ‘They’re the ruling class and we’re not part of it. Neither should we be. But the point is: Britain doesn’t need a ruling class today. The rulers are the people.
Blair’s words today seem remarkably distant, even though his government were also guilty of becoming increasingly separated from the democratic process. Perhaps, in this age of renewed class division, such a role is entirely befitting of a man like George Osborne, heir apparent to the 17th Baronet of Ballintaylor and Ballylemon. Perhaps, subconsciously, us Brits knew that it was supposed to be the poshos in charge after all. Tally-ho.
Who’s In Charge Here? 16. The Prime Minister
The Prime Minister, you would assume, is the most powerful person in the land. But it’s worth sketching out just how powerful. If he or she possesses both (1) a dominant personality and (2) a very large majority in the House of Commons, then their ultimate authority over the nation is very difficult to question.
Margaret Thatcher had both 1 and 2. Tony Blair certainly enjoyed 2. The only problem was that nobody really knew exactly what he wanted, apart from power, grinning a lot and taking us to war. His example is studied in more detail below. However, John Major had neither 1 nor 2, and so his power amounted to little more than setting up a Motorway Cones Hotline. It is not yet clear whether the present incumbent David Cameron has 1, and can’t really be said to have 2, especially seen as he is relying on another party’s support to enjoy a parliamentary majority at all.
Like other features of the British constitution, the powers and duties of the Prime Minister are not written down in legal documents. They have evolved over time according to historical circumstances. As a result, it is difficult to state exactly what the job of the Prime Minister is. As one incumbent (Herbert Asquith, PM 1908-1916) remarked, it is ‘what the office holder chooses and is able to make of it.’
Most Prime Ministers have political confidants, who may or may not have formal posts in government, to do much of the necessary negotiation and behind-the-scenes management that the post entails. The close working relationship between Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson was paralleled by that between Margaret Thatcher and William Whitelaw, and later Norman Tebbit.
It was Tony Blair however who has done most to increase prime ministerial power, and his example has to be studied here. As he relied more heavily on his unelected advisers he was moving further away from the traditional British system of democratic accountability and towards a more American style of leadership. It had been a recurring complaint for decades that the prime minister was turning into a president, or head of state, on the American pattern. Indeed, an American president in many respects actually has more limited powers than a British PM, as he is subjected to more constitutional checks and balances.
It could certainly be argued that Blair began to look more like a head of state (as Jack Straw once accidentally called him) than a head of government. As the monarchy seemed to retreat, Blair was not reluctant to move into the power vacuum. When Princess Diana died, it was Blair, not the Queen, who paid the first tribute to her as ‘the People’s Princess.’ Number Ten itself was looking less like an office and more like a court, attracting gossip and attention.
In some ways Blair was behaving more like a monarch than a president - a monarch in the days before parliamentary controls and cabinet government had grown to act as restraints. With no written constitution, Britain has always been especially vulnerable to the personal exercise of power, which has been further projected and magnified by television. A prime minister with no great respect for institutions was attaining a more potent hold on the public’s imagination than the Queen.
But much of Blair’s dominating role still depended on his own sense of certainty and fallibility, which underpinned his exceptional persuasiveness and ability to argue his case. Many of his old colleagues had been baffled by his transformation into the stubborn PM who was prepared and even eager to defy his party and risk his own downfall, particularly on the issue of war. There is little doubt that his strong religious faiths played a part in supporting his convictions as a war leader.
He at times appeared carried away by his own rhetoric, making claims about the war which could not be justified by the evidence, claims that raised more doubts about his respect for the truth. He declared that he was guided by his own personal convictions - ‘I know what I believe’ - though they were not shared by most of his party. The public, too, became more distrustful of Blair as the crisis in Iraq became more acute.
As a combined result of the Iraq war and low approval ratings, pressure built up within the Labour party for Blair to relinquish power. In May 2007, Blair announced his intention to resign as both Labour Party leader and Prime Minister. Even here, with hindsight, he had displayed shrewdness in not serving out a full third term (as he had initially promised to do), instead handing the now-poisoned chalice of premiership to Gordon Brown, who was to lead Labour to defeat in the general election of 2010.
In football terms, the prime minister picks the team and decides the tactics. There is no exasperated, sweaty chairman waiting in the wings with his finger hovering over the ejector button. The only people who can get rid of him are the fans - i.e. the voters - or himself. In addition, the PM can also be got rid of by a vote of no confidence from the House of Commons.
The PM appoints all the government’s senior ministers. He decides who is going to be in his Cabinet and controls the agenda for its meetings. He also appoints junior ministers, senior civil servants, bishops, judges, and heads of inquiries. He can also sack any of the above. The PM can make entire government departments vanish if he wants to - by joining two of them together, or simply by disbanding one. They can also invent new ones. They represent the UK abroad at important meetings and summits. They can also lead us into war, even if we don’t want one.
Indeed, it was the whole Iraq business that made many people worry that the PM was simply too powerful and that it wasn’t very fair or democratic for such decision-making ability to be vested in one person. But then again, we supposedly hold the ultimate trump card over the PM: we can chuck him out. And Blair was not the first person to be accused of being too powerful.
Over the years, because of the way our unwritten constitution has developed, more and more power has flowed into the prime ministerial cup. Verily, it now runneth over. What’s to be done? Well, if we had a written constitution, it might help. We could then set down on paper definite limits on the prime minister’s power. However, that doesn’t seem likely any time soon. So the PM remains inordinately powerful for the time being. But there is a rival next door…
Who’s In Charge Here? 13. Europe
A recurring question facing successive British governments in recent times has been how far it is prepared to become a constituent part of a European federation, and to what extent policies created in Brussels should be allowed to pervade into the everyday lives of the British people.
In a 2009 episode of BBC’s Question Time, eurosceptic Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan mentioned, to the tub-thumping anger of many on his side of the debate, that 84% of UK laws stem from the EU; the United Kingdom Independence Party leader Nigel Farrage said it was 75%; the figure most often mentioned by anti-EU types (such as French National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen or the Libertas Party) is that 80% of our laws come from the Europe, whilst in speeches the prime minister David Cameron has stated that “almost half of all the regulations affecting our businesses come from the EU”.
These figures (or, at least, figures in this rough ballpark) are widely accepted, with everyone from universities to charities seeming to accept them at face value. But are any of them actually true? And which is it? 84%? 80%? 75%? 50%? Or some other figure? Because they can’t all be right. How much say does the EU have in business regulations?
Well, a report produced by the British Chambers of Commerce investigated precisely this issue, “Worlds Apart: The British and EU Regulatory Systems” – their seventh annual report into the subject, and the fifth comparing the British and EU systems. Their conclusion? In terms of the number of regulations, the EU last year accounted for no more than 20% of laws introduced. Given this figure, and the fact that the proportion of EU regulations is declining, it is somewhat mystifying as to where Cameron got his “almost half” from, let alone those who subscribed to the even higher figures.
But however you look at it, whether you like it or not, Europe certainly has quite a few tanks on our lawn. When the Conservative PM Edward Heath signed the European Communities Act 1972, our control over certain aspects started to evaporate. It’s been carrying on ever since. The EU regularly issues ‘directives’ and ‘regulations’, which can then become part of our law. But is Europe’s power over us a good thing?
Most people on these shores would answer ‘no’. And, in many regards, they are right to say so. British national sovereignty is, to an extent, disappearing, due to industry and finance becoming increasingly constrained by European regulations. British competitiveness based on the availability of cheap labour is being eliminated by the imposition of European minimum standards, with the danger that investments will go elsewhere.
Pro-Europeans, on the other hand, see the loss of autonomy as a price worth paying for the influence British governments and individuals can exert in a much larger political unit. Better to be part of a new superpower, they argue, than an independent but third-class state on the fringe of world developments. They cite the new opportunities available for finance and industry within the EU, and claim that British economic and social development will be faster and smoother within a more dynamic economy, in which British financial expertise is joined with German industrial strength.
Many groups in Britain are positively attracted to closer European ties. Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalists see it as a way of easing the stranglehold of the British state on their own countries. The Labour Party is reassured by the social protection the EU offers to vulnerable groups like low-paid workers. Even some Conservatives such as Ken Clarke see embracing Europe as a necessary step to consolidating Britain’s world trading position, rather than as a threat to it.
Europe still, however, remains a very thorny issue to us Brits, who are often vehemently opposed to the idea of ceding power to the ‘Brussels bureaucrats’, fuelled by an often openly hostile anti-European press. Antipathy to Europe among the British is higher than among almost all other European populations. Despite this, it is clear that the responsibilities of the European Union have gradually increased over the years. EU policies now affect many aspects of daily life in Britain, and their influence is only likely to grow further, albeit in small increments.
Many of the current issues regarding European influence in the UK revolve around the implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights. This has led to measures such as the potential for allowing prisoners the vote and an appeal process allowed to those on the sex offenders’ register. The current government has voiced its objection at having to accede to the imposition of these new regulations; indeed Home Secretary Theresa May recently stated that the government would do the ‘minimum possible’ to comply with the new directives regarding appeals, and the PM has suggested an imminent reappraisal of Britain’s acceptance of the Human Rights Act. The power of Europe in Britain is certainly being felt at present.
Who’s In Charge Here? 12. The Bank of England
This venerable institution, the central bank for the whole of the UK, still maintains its unique atmosphere of reverence and detachment through its mixture of architecture and pomp. With its famous long windowless façade it stands like a fortress in the heart of the City, with good reason – the Bank has historically been subject to attack from the local population from time to time, unhappy with the unseen power it wields over the country – a power which is perhaps more concentrated now than ever before.
Inside, the Bank of England possesses a grandeur like no other bank. Its entrance hall looks like a temple, and flunkeys in pink tailcoats direct visitors past arcades leading into sumptuous halls hung with eighteenth-century portraits. Nowadays the public can be admitted through a side-door to visit a museum inside the building. It resembles a shrine for the worship of money, with an altar surrounded by gold bars and leather-bound volumes displaying, not holy scripture, but early transactions of London goldsmiths.
The Governor of the Bank of England maintains his links with the outside world partly through the ‘Court’, the nineteen directors of the Bank who meet once a month in the opulent courtroom to manage the Bank’s affairs. In the past it consisted largely of City fathers who were notably insensitive to unemployment and poverty outside the Square Mile, but today they are more broadly based and provide a wider cross-section of British life than other boardrooms of banks.
However, the present governor, Mervyn King, has more recently been accused of being a ‘coalition courtier’ and of making "excessively political" interventions with regard to UK economic policy. These accusations were given greater weight after the Wikileaks revelations of December 2010. As a result of these disclosures, King has been asked to give evidence to a Select Committee on why he was cited in coalition talks between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as backing Tory plans to introduce spending cuts this year.
The Bank of England is a lot more powerful than it used to be, for one reason. In 1997, within five days of Labour’s election win, the new Chancellor Gordon Brown transferred to the bank the power to set interest rates. Previously, that had been the government’s job, hence concern that rates were being fiddled with for the wrong reasons - i.e. not for the good of the country, but for the benefit of whichever party was in government. Now, however, the Bank of England decides the rate. Or rather its nine-man Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) does. Which is why the Bank now has a massive influence over things like mortgages, prices in the shops, and jobs.
The influence now wielded by this small group of Oxbridge economists inevitably aroused suspicion from many sources, who saw the cost of money being settled by people with none of the experience of manufacturers, who were more affected than anyone by their decisions. And why couldn’t the MPC have meetings outside London, to interact with local businessmen and local communities? Was there also really no place for a single layman who had personal experience of how interest rates could affect whole communities?
It’s important also to stress that, along with the Treasury, the Bank of England represents the extension into government of the financial interests of the City of London, the most powerful policy community in Britain. The freeing of the Bank of England to set interest rates was perhaps the most dramatic recognition of the City’s surge in importance during the 1980s and 90s, and was also an indication of both major parties’ convergence in terms of broad ideological agreement on the neo-liberal consensus - after all, freeing the Bank was implemented by the New Labour government, fitting in nicely with their general move towards the right. No government now is going to intervene in the economy to the extent that Macmillan and Heath - let alone Wilson - did in the past.
Generally the move to grant the Bank of England further independence is an indication of the consequence of putting financial considerations above other economic and social ones. The same neo-liberal ethos has led to the consolidation of the powerful position of the City of London in relation to government. The traditional dominance of finance, coordinated by the Bank of England, over the likes of manufacturing is more apparent now than perhaps at any point in Britain’s history.
Ultimately, however, the Bank was as responsible as any other British institution for failing to prevent the abuses of financial power which culminated in the current Great Recession. This traditional guardian of the integrity of the City of London seems to have a lot to answer for, as it proved as powerless as anyone to prevent the cataclysms of the past few years. Presently, it’s attempts to curb inflation also leave a lot to be desired. Once again, the incumbents of the Bank of England may well be thanking the lack of windows to be smashed by the angry mob outside.
Who’s In Charge Here? 9. The Cabinet, and 10. Ministers
The more the prime minister exercised his power directly, through Number Ten and Whitehall, the less the influence of the cabinet, which had once been seen as the heart of Britain’s democracy, the place where elected politicians came together to agree on policies, allocate spending and control civil servants.
In theory cabinet ministers have played a crucial role in the democratic system, accountable to parliament for the actions of their government departments. But in practice the cabinet’s role in the unwritten constitution has always been informal. And over recent decades this informality of the cabinet system has made it more open to abuse, and the theory has been losing touch with the reality - that a strong prime minister at a time of crisis can ride roughshod over his cabinet colleagues, and can control the government machine through unelected officials. Often the cabinet seems hardly to exist, when weak ministers cannot agree on conflicting policies, or weak ministers lose control over their civil servants. But it remains the only means by which the collective machinery of government is made answerable to the public.
The Cabinet is usually made up of 22 ministers - it can be as many as 24 - who are appointed by the prime minister. Its power generally depends on how much notice the PM wants to take of it. They meet regularly, but that doesn’t mean much. Tony Blair’s met at least once a week, but he was still admonished by many for ignoring it. Occasionally, on some matters, he bypassed it altogether, in favour of meeting up with a bunch of young, up-and-coming special advisers, known as the Sofa Cabinet, who often thrashed out aspects of government policy.
Because these Den-type meetings were all very informal, records weren’t usually kept. Obviously, this annoyed senior civil servants very much, as they like to do things by the book, which means taking a note of everything that was said. Sometimes this lack of note-taking isn’t a problem. But sometimes it’s a very big one, especially when the subject under discussion is: ‘Should we go to was with Iraq and risk thousands of British soldiers and countless Iraqi civilians getting killed?’
And on this crazy little island, that’s all fair game. It might seem inherently undemocratic, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it, except maybe bleat to the press. That’s because the cabinet doesn’t officially exist. There’s no law, or written constitution, which says what it is, or what it’s powers are. It’s simply up to the person in charge.
Blair’s cabinet included - like parliament itself - more professional politicians who had no experience of other activities and were more enclosed in the political world. This was partly due to an obvious shortage of down-to-earth politicians who talked a language closer to ordinary voters. There were also no powerful spokesmen for the interests of workers and trade unionists. John Prescott appeared more as a token worker than a serious counterweight to the technocrats and upper-middle class politicians.
Prime ministers can always bring some outsiders into government by making them peers, to sit in the House of Lords. Blair went further than most in choosing non-politicians. He turned to an ex-head of BP, an ex-television executive, his legal mentor, even his flatmate (Lord Falconer). He chose for the first time successive attorneys-general from outside the Commons. But these sudden lords were unaccustomed to the bombardments of democracy, while ordinary MPs naturally resented being overtaken by ministers who had never been elected.
Cabinet government has recently made a comeback, of sorts, via the advent of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition government. A new kind of Establishment has taken shape, circling around the cabinet ministers. However, it remains to be seen whether a more equitable system of cabinet-based government can be achieved via an occasionally uneasy union of conservatives and liberals.
The cabinet has overall been weakened, not just by the ambitions of prime ministers, but by the declining quality of their colleagues. Today it is one of the most serious flaws in the British democratic system: that the pool of talent to run the country has become too small to ensure effective government. An American president can promote anyone to his cabinet - a business leader, a general, an academic. But a British PM can only pick members of his government from parliament, mostly from the House of Commons. When the quality of MPs seriously declines, so does the quality of government.
10. Ministers
The amount of power the ministers themselves have depends on two things: 1) what department they’re in charge of and 2) their own personality and ability. It is said the three most powerful positions in the government, apart from the Prime Minister, are Home Secretary, Chancellor and Foreign Secretary. The last one there is debatable; if the Foreign Secretary had decided, in 2002, that it wasn’t such a good idea to go to war with Iraq after all, he would simply have been told to get stuffed. Which doesn’t make him very powerful at all.
If ministers want to maximise the power they have, they must, as mentioned earlier, be able to keep the civil service on their side. If they don’t they may find themselves verging on the impotent. The difference between a good minister and a bad one is massive; if they really know their stuff and can argue passionately but coherently, ministers can take on the biggest gun in town, the PM, and win. A bad minister, if they’re unusually honest, will simply admit it and resign. There are more incompetent ministers than you might think, but their shortcomings are usually kept hidden.
Some ministers can be surprisingly vague on important matters of detail. When Norman Fowler was in charge of the Department of Health under Thatcher, the AIDS crisis was a big issue. But Norm had a problem. He knew it could be transmitted by oral sex, but he didn’t know what oral sex was. A flunkey had to explain. Norm went pale and quiet. A few seconds later, he just said the one word: ‘Blimey.’
Who’s In Charge Here? 8. Focus Groups and Bright Young Things
Both of which have power, in that they can create policies, or at least make a serious contribution to them.
Each party has its own way of coming up with new policies. Labour is particularly fond of focus groups, which usually consist of between 12 and 20 people who are representative of society as a whole - black, white, rich, poor, professional, unemployed etc. They are bunged in a room, given chocolate Hobnobs and tea, and asked loads of questions such as ‘What do you think of this policy on health?’ and ‘What do you think the government should be spending its money on?’
Some people think focus groups are a bad idea. It’s not the job of voters to think up policies, they say, that’s what politicians are for: it’s like the tail wagging the dog. Others argue that a good government should be - to use a well-worn political cliché - ‘responsive to the needs of its people.’
Bright Young Things are often called ‘special advisers’. Practically every minister has one or more, as do most senior members of the opposition parties. They will often write speeches for ministers, or pen articles for them. These articles will then appear in the papers looking as if they’ve been written personally by the minister in question, which they practically never are.
The Number 10 Policy Unit, which has helped the government make up its mind on big issues, is also brim full of special advisers. They also crop up, in alarmingly large numbers, about a year or two before general elections, to help draw up party manifestoes. Special advisers often get a bad press, as they’re not elected, and the worry is that some of them have too much power.
Not that those involved will admit this. ‘The centre actually has far less power than is typically ascribed to it,’ said Philip Gould, the former New Labour strategy adviser. Number Ten, he argued, was ‘a tiny corner of a huge government machine, staffed with talented people but lacking the resources necessary to be a commanding and dominating nerve centre.’ But that was not how it looked from outside Number Ten, and the concentration of power within this ‘tiny corner’ had become much more visible to the rest of Whitehall, and eventually, through Lord Hutton’s 2003 inquiry, to the general public.
When Tony Blair prepared for war with Iraq in 2003 he relied increasingly on his small group within Number Ten, and carefully excluded cabinet ministers from key decisions. When Britain finally went to war Blair ran the operation tightly from within Number Ten. It was not the first time that such an arrangement had occurred, but the level to which cabinet members were excluded was felt to be intolerable to the likes of cabinet members Robin Cook and Clare Short. When Short resigned in May 2003 she protested that ‘power is being ever increasingly centralised round the prime minister and just a few advisers.’
The concentration of power at Number Ten around the PM and his special advisers had certainly helped to demoralise not just the cabinet but the rest of Whitehall, and many senior civil servants believed that it had gone against the whole democratic principle of the collective responsibility of government.
Who’s In Charge Here? 7. Civil Servants
Often overlooked, civil servants are amongst the most powerful people in the land. They might go about their business quietly, unnoticed by the rest of us, but it’s civil servants who provide the all-important advice on which ministerial decisions are based. Power in Britain still depends, to a surprising extent, on secrecy - away from the prying eyes of democracy and demands for accountability.
Civil servants aren’t supposed to run the country, but they know exactly how it’s run, which can sometimes amount to the same thing. They are the unelected bureaucrats who know better than anyone how the system works. There are about half a million civil servants in the UK at the moment, but there are only a few dozen we need to worry about: the ones that advise ministers.
The most powerful civil servants are called, somewhat misleadingly, ‘secretaries’. but this lot don’t do dictation. The ones with the real clout are the Permanent Secretaries. Each government department - i.e. Agriculture, Education, Industry and so on - will have at least one Permanent Secretary, as well as a gaggle of Second Permanent Secretaries.
There’s a clue as to why Permanent Secretaries are so powerful. It’s in the title. Elected governments may come and go, but civil servants generally stay put. So it’s not surprising, given their greater experience, that they sometimes outmanoeuvre ministers, especially new ones, who are often simply grateful to have these people around for their assistance and insight. Ministers have good reason to be in awe of the permanent denizens of Whitehall, who have seen so many politicians and policies rise and fall.
Top civil servants write, and come up with the ideas for, an enormous number of the laws that get passed by Parliament every year. As much as 80 per cent of new legislation is simply bog-standard stuff that reflects the everyday demands of running a country. The boring but necessary stuff.
The favourite tool of top civil servants is called a ‘submission’. Some of them write more submissions than traffic wardens issue parking tickets. They are (usually) extremely well-written documents of about three to four pages, which identify problems and issues and suggest solutions. Your clever, experienced senior civil servant will write their submission in a suitably cunning way so that the minister will be drawn to one particular course of action, even though more than one has been offered.
Gerald Kaufman, a former Labour minister who wrote a book called How To Be A Minister, says the power than top civil servants have is often negative. If they don’t agree with a certain course of action, they may be able to block it, slow it down, or have it dropped altogether. This can be done in a number of ways.
For instance, if a minister has ignored all of a top civil servant’s submissions and come up with one of his own, then the civil servant can contact his opposite number at one of the other departments, say the Treasury. The Treasury is the most important Whitehall department of all, as it controls the finances. Without the support of the Treasury, the minister hasn’t a hope of getting what he wants. So the civil servant tells his Treasury accomplice what a plonker the minister is, and the next day the minister gets a note from the Treasury saying ‘Sorry: no can do, pal.’ The minister is shafted. It may sound like a thinly disguised scene from Yes, Minister but according to those who’ve been there and done that, this is exactly how it works.
Civil servants should, in theory, be utterly neutral. They must serve the best interests of their country, not whichever government happens to be in power. However, that much-valued impartiality went by the board a fair bit, firstly with Thatcher’s politicisation of the civil service, and continued with New Labour’s ascent to power in 1997. The party started bringing in highly paid, professional special advisers like Alastair Campbell. Many in the old school feel that Campbell tarnished the good name of the civil service by shamelessly serving the interests of his political masters. Thatcher had also done much the same thing back in the 1980s, when she injected the civil service with a load of top business types from the City, to help her push through her agenda. But Blair and Brown perhaps ended up dominating Whitehall even more than Thatcher ever did.
The ‘special advisers’ issue has been the most contentious of all in recent years. They had always been a part of the political system, but some see them as a reversion to the patronage system that existed before the reforms of the mid-nineteenth century. Blair, in his crusade to modernise government, was determined to break through what he saw as the obstacles of Whitehall. He saw himself more as a chairman of a modern corporation than as a traditional arbiter between rival departments. His, and Brown’s, reforms have led to a more focused civil service, but one which is far from capable of coordinating and directing the vast and complex machinery of government. Many outsiders now find it harder to distinguish between top civil servants and businessmen in Whitehall, as the mandarins become jumbled up with corporate executives.
In summary, ministers and politicians will always try and get one over on civil servants, and vice versa. The government of the day may be at the steering wheel, but if it wasn’t for the civil service, they wouldn’t be able to get the bus out of the garage. Over the decades, even experienced advisers coming into Whitehall have been astonished to discover the extent of the mandarins’ influence.
Today senior civil servants are somewhat more exposed to the public, but they continue to enjoy a protection from scrutiny and criticism which is never granted to politicians. Their relationship with ministers has always been ambiguous, for they have always been expected to combine loyalty with independence of judgement - a very tricky combination.
Who’s In Charge Here? 6. National Parliaments and Assemblies
When New Labour took over in 1997 they started handing back large chunks of power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Thanks to devolution, Scotland now has it own Parliament and Wales and Northern Ireland each have their own Assembly.
The Scottish Parliament is the most powerful of the three. It has 129 members. It can pass laws on agriculture, health, education, transport and the environment. Most important of all, it can vary the amount of tax paid by the Scottish people. But implementation of some important centralised aspects - like defence and foreign affairs - still rests with the big boys in Westminster.
The Welsh Assembly, which has 60 members, is less powerful than its Scottish counterpart. It can only pass secondary legislation. This means it can interpret laws, but it can’t come up with new ones. Say, for instance, that Westminster has said there must be a national curriculum in schools. That’s the primary legislation. The Welsh Assembly would then be free, under its secondary legislative powers, to decide exactly which subjects should be taught in that curriculum.
The Northern Ireland Assembly came into being as a result of the Good Friday Agreement of 10 April 1998. It has 108 members and the power to run most of Northern Ireland’s affairs. Over the next four years, the Assembly passed 27 acts. However, due to events - i.e. problems over proving whether or not the IRA had actually got rid of its weapons or not - it was suspended in October 2002. It was not reinstated until May 2007, with further powers relating to policing and justice transferred in April last year.
As for England itself, apart from the introduction of a London Assembly in 2000 via the recreation of the old Greater London Authority, the issue of regional assemblies or a separate English Parliament remains an open one. However, the prevailing opinion in England appears to be that most people are not in favour of the creation of further governmental bodies.