In this instance, last term’s report has arrived after the exams are over. The final grades have turned out pretty much as predicted: no scholarships this year, to put it mildly. Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton have collected 15 essays from diverse political, journalistic and academic perspectives that deliver a crushing verdict on the past 14 years of government – not from the angle of a hostile ideological programme but largely in respect of plain competence, consistency and reliability. The authors deploy a formidable armoury of statistics and documentation to argue that this has been a period of unparalleled underachievement; and some of them, along with the editors, struggle to explain just why the results have been so dismal.
There is no denying that the “external shocks” discussed in Egerton’s chapter and in Michael Clarke’s treatment of foreign policy have been extreme, especially the Eurozone crisis, the pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East; but – even without the self-inflicted scourge of having to manage Brexit – the story is mostly one of missed opportunities and chaotic improvisation. “Austerity” under the coalition government squeezed out possibilities that might (in a period of reasonably benign monetary and energy supply) have mitigated the later effects of inflation and declining growth. Perhaps the worst of its long-term effects has been to lower expectations around public services, and to consolidate a sense of alienation and powerlessness among those already vulnerable (I recall writing in this magazine in 2011 about the hugely damaging impact of governmental policies that had not been subject to proper public scrutiny; the large-scale abstentions from the electoral process that have grown ever more marked underline the point).
The truth is that “austerity”, along with the specious rhetoric of being “all in it together”, set a tone for theatrical short-termism in our politics, solutions that had never paused to define carefully the problems they sought to answer. Brexit (which might have merited a separate chapter of its own in this collection) stands as the apogee of this style of government.
Its most tangible immediate effect was a colossal diversion of political resources. As many had warned in unambiguous terms, the reckless lack of planning that attended the entire process meant that the UK hardly had a functioning government at all for some five years.
There are plenty of questions to be asked about how “growth” is to be pursued and understood – it remains something of a shibboleth – but stagnation is no sort of answer for those questions. Combined with opportunistic and incoherent fiscal policy (for example on fuel taxes), the effect has been not merely to kick the can down the road, but to guarantee that it becomes a larger and messier can with every year that passes. The same point is painfully in evidence in the chapter on environmental policy. It chronicles a brief spurt of good intentions and even effective legislation (with Michael Gove as an unlikely hero for a very short patch in the Cameron era) followed by a descent into muddle, aspirational vagueness and latterly a dangerous drift towards normalising a cavalier and ill-informed indifference to the inexorable pressures of the climate crisis, shaped by a loose alliance of populist anxieties.
The editors have very properly allotted two chapters to health-related matters: one more directly focused on the management of the NHS, one on the relation between health and social inequality. The latter, by Michael Marmot and Clare Bambra, is one of the best pieces in the book in its use of detailed statistical material (though Paul Webb, John Curtice, Brendan O’Leary and the three authors of the chapter on the economy also present an impressive array of statistical evidence). Marmot and Bambra barely contain their indignation at the prevailing lazy and collusive approach to health-based inequality over most of the past decade. Confusion and evasion around the tax bill for effective public healthcare are symptomatic of a general reluctance to open an honest conversation with the electorate about the real cost of social goods.
And insofar as social goods include a robust investment in the arts – not as an “entertainment industry” but as a genuine part of critical public discourse – the failure is again spectacular. John Kampfner in his chapter on this subject quotes Nicholas Hytner as saying that he does not know any subsidised arts body in the UK that feels financially secure at the moment.
The catalogue continues with little remission. Alan Smithers, in his chapter on education, makes a rather over-optimistic case for the effectiveness of school reforms that sidesteps some awkward questions about the morale of the teaching profession, the driven and authoritarian functionalism that has dominated approaches to educational philosophy overall, the ongoing problems with young people’s mental health (not all attributable to Covid), and the dire situation of school finances in so many areas. But even he cannot find much good to say about the humiliating shambles of higher education policy – even granted that, as he says, university management has frequently been supine in the face of aggressive and ignorant governmental pressures, and irresolute in its defence of its own principles and autonomy. As with the arts, it leaves us with the question of how independent critical perspectives are nurtured in an anxiously managerial system allergic to most discussions of fundamental social values.
Several chapters look at wider “cross-curricular” matters. O’Leary offers a very thorough analysis of what he aptly calls the “unions” of the UK, underlining the very different histories that lie behind the diverse arrangements existing between Westminster and the other three national legislative assemblies. He is unsparing in his criticism of the shiftiness – or worse – that surrounded Northern Ireland’s fate in the wake of Brexit, and sees the future of the Union overall as pretty bleak. It is a conclusion that might need modification in the light of the collapse of the SNP vote, and I am not sure that he fully appreciates the nuanced gradualism that characterises the current Welsh nationalist position, even after the demise of Plaid Cymru’s quasi-coalition with Welsh Labour in the Senedd. But he is right to stress that the constitutional conventions around devolved government need radical reform, stronger statutory reinforcement and greater consistency within and between themselves.
Constitutional issues are treated in a particularly valuable chapter by Meg Russell, who surveys the various acts of vandalism perpetrated by recent governments in relation to the courts and the sovereignty of parliament. As she writes, it is ironic that a Conservative administration should be so contemptuous of the traditional checks on executive overreach. It’s not entirely a new trend, but the further irony is that this executive overreach has been enthusiastically represented by governments and their media allies as a reinforcement of popular sovereignty against “unelected elites” – or even elected “elites” in the House of Commons (both Theresa May and Boris Johnson were liable to speak as though sustained and widespread dissent in the Commons was a deplorable failure of the system). It all suggests that our basic understanding of a democracy that is both representative and law-governed has become dangerously thin.
But rescuing our democratic imagination from sloganeering nonsense requires a rebuilding of political trust – one of the main tasks of a new governing generation. The disturbingly low turnout at the general election was disproportionately evident among disadvantaged and low-income groups. It may be true that, as Curtice says, class now plays little role in deciding how people vote; but it most definitely helps to determine whether people vote.
Two themes connected with this recur in several portions of the book. One is the cost of what the editors call “churn”: the feverish rate of movement between departments, making it impossible for any conscientious ministerial newcomer to plan a sustained strategy (Rory Stewart’s recent memoir is eloquent about the cost of this). If appointment to posts on which the welfare of millions depends is based on calculations of loyalty rewarded and factions pacified, there will be little or no ground for believing that the interests of the population are front and centre in an administration’s concerns.
Short-term, poorly planned initiatives will dominate, crafted for an audience not a citizenry. It is harder for a minister to build up real expertise and sympathy, harder to spend time testing, weighing, gathering “ownership” of a policy. And when the ministerial churn is paralleled in the culture of a civil service in which a fairly rapid circulation between departments is now routine, the chances of coherent policymaking are not going to be high.
This is interwoven with a second, more fundamental and more uncomfortable point. Relatively few politicians, despite the rhetorical venom that flows so easily these days, are malign or deeply corrupt individuals. But the political culture increasingly encourages and rewards short-termist and theatrical behaviour, uncritical loyalty to leadership, corrosive anxiety about media reaction and so on. It is a culture in which it is easy to lose sight of the unromantic task of identifying problems that urgently need durable, accountable solutions.
The more politics becomes gesture-driven, the more space opens up for varieties of corruption that are barely seen as such. In the pandemic, much was achieved, as the editors observe; but the pressure for rapid action without responsible planning (as in the failures of Test and Trace systems) opened the door to quick and bad decisions around procurement, lethally tainted by cronyism.
Again and again, the authors of this essential and sobering book repeat that there is no substitute for courage, candour and moral toughness in political leadership. They do not hold back in identifying the lack of one or all of these characteristics among our recent leaders; so it is not surprising that disaffection hangs over the entire system. The new government will suffer from the hangover caused by other people’s bingeing.
There is no magic bullet for the renewal of ethical passion, for liberation from the anxieties of image and popularity; but readers of this collection could do worse than ask what can be done by all of us to refresh our expectations, and so give permission to political leaders to treat us like adults.
The Conservative Effect, 2010-2024: 14 Wasted Years?
Edited by Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton
Cambridge University Press, 566pp, £16.99
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This article appears in the 25 Jul 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Summer Special 2024