Back to Ben Brogan’s latest piece, headlined David Cameron has lost his zeal for the radical in favour of retreat. This seems unduly harsh. According to the Telegraph’s Deputy Editor, however:
Yet, as has become increasingly apparent, retreat is fast becoming the order of the day. Indeed, the gap I mentioned a few weeks ago between those who want to be radical at all costs and those who want to trim in order to win the next election is widening faster than I initially thought. The success of the Tory local election and AV campaigns, masterminded by George Osborne, has emboldened those, led by the Chancellor, who say that an outright Tory majority at the next election is in sight and nothing must be done to jeopardise that goal. Mr Cameron’s implementation chief Steve Hilton, a key reformer, could be forgiven for fearing that the revolution in how state and society are organised, which he argues is vital to the nation’s future, is quietly being ditched. Champions of the public service reform agenda, such as the think tank Reform, are in despair. It issued a significant report this week describing this as a “pivotal moment” that required political leadership, backed up by a poll showing that public support for change is greater than the politicians realise. No one is quite sure which side Mr Cameron finds himself on.[…] The argument being pushed by the chief engineers of the Coalition project, such as Oliver Letwin, is that it is necessary to retreat in order to advance. But while Mr Cameron’s capacity for moments of daring remains undiminished, it is no longer possible to say unequivocally that this is a radical Coalition steering a course towards difficulty and danger. Of course, the Prime Minister may surprise us still. But for the moment, he gives every impression of being a politician who has had enough of revolution, and now wants results.
In truth, I think that interesting as it is, Brogan’s framing of the debate as Revolution vs Retreat is mistaken. It is not “trimming” to ask if a policy makes sense or can, even if sensible, actually be achieved. It is prudent. Whatever their merits, in both theory and potentially practice, it is plainly evident that the NHS reforms have been bungled in terms of the politics of the matter. Something similar might be said of the tuition fees brouhaha. Lessons could be learnt from this.
Moreover, when did this government suddenly become all timid and mouselike? It can’t see a windmill without thinking it worth a tilt. Would this be the government determined to restore some kind of order to the public finances? The government ploughing ahead with an education policy that could, with luck, be the best thing to happen to English secondary schools in 40 years? Above all, would this be the government that’s launched a 10-years-in-the-making welfare reform programme that is, outside the economic brief, perhaps the most important and ambitious thing it could possibly have chosen to do? Any one of these could count as a signature achievement; to try all three in a single parliament is exceptionally ambitious. To do so in a time of economic distress makes it an even more daunting proposition.
No, the problem is not a retreat from revolution. The problem is that the government risks losing all this important stuff in a litany of headlines about government incompetence. Ken Clarke and Andrew Lansely and Caroline Spelman and rather too many other ministers have done their best to make Labour’s life easier than it should or need be. A period of quiet diligence from each of them would be no bad thing. If said studies – and attention to detail – can produce a handful of modest but welcome achievements then so much the better.
It is a sad thing indeed that governments, even coalition governments, arrive in office with all this energy and political capital at precisely the moment they least know how to use any of it. Nevertheless, this government has set its agenda in big, broad strokes (not forgetting the poor old Big Society) and now it needs to concentrate on process, detail and achievement.
It is not a question of one brilliant and bold term or two terms of quietly plodding along because if there’s no second term for Prime Minister Cameron many of the reforms introduced in his first term can be undone by his successor. As Cameron and Osborne and Clegg have discovered, it’s much harder to roll-back the legacy of a two or three term government. Besides, the government’s education and, most particularly, welfare projects are ten-year programmes the benefits of which will not be widely-known or seen by the next election.
That’s enough to be getting on with before one even considers the other challenges the government faces. The economy obviously but also Scotland and, in terms of the Big Society, changing the culture of government service provision one department and programme or initiative at a time. None of this can be done as rapidly as the press might want or as quickly as ministers may once have thought. Much of the time it must be frustrating, painstaking work.
But the overall shape of the story the government wants to tell has become clear; working within those parameters and towards those goals is the next task and the obvious step after a breakneck and ambitious first year. If this means fewer announcements of new plans or reviews – and fewer media appearances by cabinet ministers – then so much the better. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, even so, for the government to have a more effective press and political shop.
This is an ambitious and quite radical government but the thing about permanent revolution is that it’s needed to mask a lack of real achievement and, besides and partly because of that, it rarely ends well. A second-term isn’t the only prize but unless you get that second chance all the time and effort and energy put into the first term will, most probably, not amount to very much at all. And a single-term Prime Minister is usually a poor and sad thing indeed.
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