Politics explained

What was it that Mario Cuomo, probably the most successful politician to come out of New York, used to say? Ah, yes: “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose”. Wise words, and they come readily to mind when assessing Boris Johnson’s first year after his famous election win last December. No 10 has been, at best, dysfunctional. To borrow another bit of wizened political wisdom, such internal feuds and ego-fights usually turn out to be even worse than they are portrayed in the press. “Princess Nut Nut” and a media team on non-speaking terms probably isn’t the half of it. If so, it is no great surprise the country is where it is today, and why the prime minister’s personal approval ratings have slumped. The arrival of the prime minister’s new chief of staff, Dan Rosenfield, a former Treasury civil servant of a solid, professional disposition, marks a shift towards a more prosaic style of government, in the best sense of the term. No more moonshots, perhaps.What both Mr Johnson and his now ex-chief adviser Dominic Cummings were brilliant at was campaigning, as witnessed in the European referendum and the last general election (as well as Mr Johnson’s unlikely run at the London mayoralty). They revelled in pithy poetic phrases, lurid rhetoric and soaring ambition. They seem to have been much less successful in the arts of government. Attempting to redesign the machinery of government in the middle of a pandemic and with Brexit to get done was probably a strategic error. It led to briefings against, and the departure of, permanent secretary Sir Mark Sedwill; as well as the departure of then-chancellor Sajid Javid, who tried to appoint his special advisers, part of a wider move to take control of the Treasury.  Dominic Cummings might claim that putting real-time data flows and analysis at the heart of governmental decision making, in and around No 10, was in fact the best way to tackle any crisis. He might also be right that the Treasury is too powerful and narrowly focused, in some abstract sense. Perhaps his modernisation of British government was in the end stymied by vested interests in the NHS or HM Treasury, but in any case it mostly failed and mass testing remains undelivered and the economy, partly as a result, is a mess. Test and trace might be ready by the spring, about a year after the pandemic got going and when the vaccines should be coming through.   More

From Dominic Cummings to Priti Patel, this government is failing to practice what it preaches – and the public has noticed, writes Sean O’Grady More

All this has happened before, but mostly a long time ago. George Barnes, who was Labour leader 1910-11, and who served in David Lloyd George’s wartime coalition cabinet, had the whip removed in 1918 when the rest of the Labour Party left the coalition. He stayed on in government and held his seat at the 1918 election, which he fought on a “coalition coupon”. Ramsay MacDonald, who was Labour leader and sitting prime minister when he formed the National government with the Conservatives in the economic crisis of 1931, was expelled by his party. Arthur Henderson, who succeeded him as Labour leader, disagreed with the decision and refused to sign the letter expelling him. Michael Foot is the other Labour leader who had the whip removed, but that was in 1961, when he and four other Labour backbenchers voted against defence spending, 20 years before he became leader. The whip was restored to them after two years.  More

As the National Audit Office (NAO) report into the award of Covid-19 contracts suggests, the reasons for the apparent waste of billions of pounds and ignoring the usual rules about probity and value for money were twofold: panic and cronyism. One is perhaps understandable; the other rather less so. And the £18bn of questionable contracts identified by the unimpeachable public sector auditors may not be the final sum total, given that consultants are still being employed and contracts remain open…The panic arose because of the near total lack of protective equipment, ventilators and intensive care beds and associated kit. By March, the nature of Covid had become clear, with its potentially lethal consequences for older people and those with pre-existing conditions. With no therapeutic treatments, let alone a “cure” or vaccine, the possibility that the NHS would be overwhelmed became obvious. A lockdown was imposed and money was thrown almost indiscriminately at the problem. Hence the unlikely manufacturers engaged to make masks and ventilators, some of which were never delivered. Beyond the scope of this NAO study would be the £12bn expended on developing a mass test and trace system, and the billions more on Treasury job protection schemes that were open to fraud, exploitation and in any case poorly targeted, such as the “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme. That one may actually have been counterproductive in public health terms by encouraging people to congregate indoors.   More

Reports suggest it is in his mind. Asked about future plans, the prime minister’s former chief adviser makes a mime of pulling the safety pin out of a grenade and lobbing it with intent at some unspecified but easily identified object. He seems to be the sort of personality who likes to have the last word, and does not let go easily.  When, for example, in 2014 he was special adviser to Michael Gove at education, the prime minister David Cameron fired Cummings, so troublesome was he. Yet he still turned up at the department and made no secret of his contempt for Cameron and most of his party (Cummings has never been a Tory member). Cummings detailed and lengthy blogs, and the equally meticulous briefings he sometimes offers journalists also point to his taste for explication and analysis, often through the prism of military or managerial strategy.  More

So far Keir Starmer has allowed the Conservative government to tear itself apart without providing any commentary from the opposition. On Wednesday, the incendiary report that Boris Johnson was “poised” to make Lee Cain, Dominic Cummings’s lieutenant, Downing Street chief of staff provoked Tory civil war, with Tory MPs and Carrie Symonds, the prime minister’s fiancee, piling in to stop the appointment. Starmer ignored it at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), raising worthy subjects such as armed forces charities and wasteful spending on PR consultants. Instead of being confirmed as chief of staff, however, Cain that evening announced his resignation. This time the Labour Party did say something, putting out a three-sentence statement: “On the day the UK became the first country in Europe to report 50,000 coronavirus deaths and the public endure another lockdown, Boris Johnson’s government is fighting like rats in a sack over who gets what job. It is precisely this lack of focus and rank incompetence that has held Britain back. The public deserve better than this incompetent and divided Conservative government.”  More

Talk about a bomb in the bubble. The prime minister was “poised” to promote Lee Cain, his director of communications, to chief of staff, it was reported yesterday morning. This detonated a small explosion in the cloistered world of political advisers and journalists in and around Downing Street, and last night Cain announced he was resigning. To understand its significance, we need to rehearse the history of the prime minister’s office. The term “chief of staff” was first used in Margaret Thatcher’s time by David Wolfson, the business person, but it was more of a grand title than an executive office. Tony Blair was the first to appoint a chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, as a political appointee to run No 10 in conjunction with the civil service. He served for the full 10 years. David Cameron had a similar administrative linchpin in the form of Ed Llewellyn for all his six years.  More

A galaxy of stars of what Professor Peter Hennessy, the historian, calls the “special adviserdom” will be assembled by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee of MPs tomorrow, to give their views on “the role and status of the prime minister’s office”. Appearing before the committee, presumably via Zoom, will be: Fiona Hill, joint chief of staff to Theresa May for her first year as prime minister; Polly Mackenzie, director of policy in Nick Clegg’s office when he was deputy prime minister; Jonathan Powell, chief of staff to Tony Blair; Professor Sir Geoff Mulgan, head of the No 10 policy unit and then the strategy unit under Blair; and John Redwood, the Conservative MP who was head of Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit.
They were all special advisers – political appointees rather than civil servants – who worked at the heart of government. That is the high-powered seminar convened by William Wragg, the independent-minded 32-year-old Conservative MP who chairs the committee, to pass judgement on the latest attempt to re-order what is known as “the centre” of government.  More