This Government is not telling us what we can judge them on – it is telling us what we may judge them on
Originally published here
We are a nation being taken for fools. The Prime Minister came across recently in his relaunch speech as someone who hasn’t had a proper boss in a good while.
The Government’s new pledges following Starmer’s ‘reset’ event are little more than an attempt to distract us from what it is not doing – and in making that announcement, it is also showing us what it genuinely has little interest in doing.
In fact, this is little more than a case of wishing to be able to mark one’s own homework. The Prime Minister is a highly experienced forensic prosecutor. He is accustomed to pointing out the flaws in others, but not so much when the shoe is on the other foot.
Hence why this Government is not telling us what we can judge them on – it is telling us what we may judge them on. It seeks to control that narrative, instead of the electorate.
Having been a manager for many years, I know what KPIs are about. They are intended, ostensibly, to generate a framework around which performance can be evaluated. But by delimiting that, you also limit it – and how many of us actually get to set our own?
The Prime Minister does not want us to pay much attention to how little focus he has on defence. He does not want us to realise that his administration has no real intention of dealing with the problems of mass migration.
This is a classic managerialist deflection. In professional life, everyone has a boss – and the Prime Minister’s is the electorate. Yet he evidently feels entitled to set his own standards as to what we are allowed to judge him on. Whoever you are, dear Reader, I wouldn’t try that tactic on your own boss.
It bears all the hallmarks of New Labour’s Pledge Cards from a quarter of a century ago. These were wheeled out on all possible occasions during their election campaigns, and subsequently used by the government of the era to show us that they said they would do something, and they did it.
They just didn’t want us to focus on anything else they did, or didn’t do – Iraq, anyone? The Supreme Court? The catastrophic constitutional failure that has been devolution? Selling off the gold? Unemployment up once more?
Ah, yes, but you’re only supposed to judge us on the Pledge Cards, eh? Anything else was… hmmm, perhaps mere happenstance? Governing is tricky, you know! Well, yes – and that’s why we elected you to be good at it. It was not to timidly shy away from that which you were either unable to achieve, or arrogant enough to think you didn’t need to – however your boss felt.
In fact, this is nothing more than a clever ruse to distract us from whatever else you’ve been doing (which you either said you wouldn’t, or never said you would). It also, by sleight of hand, distracts from whatever else you’ve not been doing, but which was needed – because you never saw it as either feasible or, perhaps, desirable to begin with.
The reality is that this is one of the more tacit (yet clear to the clear-sighted) ways of admitting managerial failure – if you’re now seizing the agency to set standards, it can only be because you’d really rather nobody else did. But the damned do not get to pick their own noose.
As a nation, and as an electorate, we need to see this ‘reset’ for exactly what it is: managing expectations, as the lingo goes. But in fact, it is more than just that – more than just an attempt to seize the narrative. It is nothing other than a classic attempt to pre-empt failure in other areas, as well as a rather snooty dismissal of anyone else’s notions as to what should perhaps be more of a priority.
For both the art, and the privilege, of governance is to prioritise. In the twin worlds of both politics and governance – and the bastard son of the two that feels the steel rod of journalism – absolutely nothing is unimportant. Those who say ‘the Tories don’t care about this’ or ‘Labour don’t care about that’ are both barking up the wrong tree.
No – everything is important. Being in power basically means you now get to decide what is more important than what else. Yet when you do so, you are still not supposed to be able to mark that homework for yourself. It does take a rather particular breed of haughtiness to tell others what they may or may not judge you for.
You do not get to tell the electorate how it should appraise you – that job belongs to your boss: the people. If you are already trying so desperately now to seize that agency for yourself, this can only bode ill for your own expectations of success.
To reiterate: when you delimit something, you also limit it. The Prime Minister may be doing nothing more than limiting the chances of his own party being re-elected in a few years’ time.
