Life in the castle: Politicians, bureaucracy and accountability

“You’re very severe,” said the chairman, “but multiply your severity by a thousand and it will still be as nothing compared with the severity that the authorities show toward themselves. Only a total stranger could ask such a question. Are there control agencies? There are only control agencies. Of course they aren’t meant to find errors, in the vulgar sense of that term, since no errors occur, and even if an error does occur, as in your case, who can finally say that it is an error.”  From Franz Kafka, "The Castle"

People really don't like politicians. We've known this for years, it should come as no surprise to any observer. And maybe it's a problem:

The research, which explores the reasons behind the precipitous drop in voter turnout – particularly among under-30s – finds that it is anger with the political class and broken promises made by high-profile figures that most rile voters, rather than boredom with Westminster.

But for as long as I can remember people have said that politicians don't keep promises. The problem is that, in the political game the making of promises is part of the currency. This is because the nature of democracy - the election thing especially - is for that currency to be votes rather than money.

For some the issue is fundamental:

This is no recent trend but is, in my view, the outcome of many centuries of shift away from deference to collective authority towards the free choice of the individual. At one stage, parliamentary democracy was a major consequence of this shift as feudal elites in charge by virtue of force and divinity made way for democratic elites chosen by free voting individuals. Now this historic shift is swamping parliamentary democracy itself.

The strange thing is that, while we get more detached from politics (perhaps because of the "shift away from deference to collective authority"),  that 'collective authority' gets more and more powerful and less and less accountable. We do not have 'feudal elites' but we do live in a world where government and its agents dominate large parts of life and interfere in the rest, mostly for some supposed 'common purpose'. The collective persists but it does so in a manner where any control or influence we have as individuals happens more by accident or good fortune rather than by design.

In the simplest of terms the management of our public services is largely unaccountable. And the reasons for this lack are many - from my near twenty year experience in local government here are a few:

• The sheer size of government - look at the NHS, at higher education or at planning and ask how it could be possible for a few ministers (mostly buried in paperwork) and an inefficient select committee of parliament to hold these departments to account?
• Resistance to change - for all that political leadership demands (and legislates for) change, the response of the bureaucracy, unions and academia is to organise the reform so as to secure the minimum possible actual change
• Professionalisation - everything must be 'professional', which means that those who aren't professionals in the given area are probably unqualified to comment and certainly unqualified to hold those professionals to account. As a result boards of professionals are used resulting in an inevitable closing of ranks.
• Secrecy and cover up - we hear every now and then about terrible things that happen in public agencies but only ever thanks to leaks and whistleblowers never through the usual processes of scrutiny or appraisal. The default position for government, for its agents and for the courts is always secrecy, always the gag.
• Centralisation, command and control - Anne Widdecombe observed how this was inevitable so long as the Minister has to go on the Today programme in response to things that go wrong. But this merely reinforces the chimera of ministerial control and prevents other forms of scrutiny working

I've resisted talking about more politically contested areas such as the role of trade unions, the impact of contracting and outsourcing and the role of the media in sustaining the myth of government's accountability. These few examples are not addressed by well-meaning attempts to improve public accountability, for example the apple pie and motherhood that is "the Nolan Principles", the creation of statutory officer positions in local government or the new Health & Wellbeing Boards (with a completely damaged and dysfunctional governance system imposed by an ignorant central government bureaucracy).

Public services in the UK are only accountable by happy and occasional accident - the conscientious local manager, the especially honest council leader or the whistle-blowing doctor - but in the main the way in which essential services are planned and managed is not accountable to the public who pay the bills.

Far too often as citizens we find ourselves waiting on the often arbitrary, certainly value-judged decisions of bureaucratic managers. The planning decision so we can open our cafe, a choice as to what care or treatment grandma will receive or some or other seemingly random ban, restriction or injunction imposed with no chance for challenge by some public official - we are powerless to stop this, we might through the efforts of a local councillor or the anger of a lawyer get the system bent enough to allow us to do our innocent business, but mostly we just bow our heads and mutter "jobsworth" before moving on.

And we blame the politicians. We blame them for promising accountability where there is none (nor hope of any) and then failing to deliver. We blame them for the breaking public systems, the uncaring public officials and the lousy results at our children's schools.

And the politicians promise to fix it all. The problem is that we can't, we're not allowed to.

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Apathy, elitism and bureaucracy - an ancient problem

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

So it’s that apathy thing again. You know, people who can’t or won’t be bothered to waddle down to the village hall to vote. Apparently this is “humiliating” for the Prime Minister – or at least that’s what the FT says:

David Cameron’s hopes that Britain would embrace his vision of US-style elected police chiefs lay in tatters as the public turned its back on his latest attempt to change the way the country is run.

An inquiry was launched on Friday by the Electoral Commission into a day of apathy at the ballot box, which saw only one-in-seven voters turn out in an election the prime minister insisted would transform Britain’s policing and which cost £100m to set up.

But it isn’t really as simple as that. And neither should we be as bothered about low turnout as us political sorts say. Don’t get me wrong, I do think we should vote – early and often as the saying goes – but I don’t have a problem with people who choose not to do so. Or indeed for the many folk whose lives are liberated enough for the act of voting not to cross their minds.

Last Thursday’s election saw record levels of apathy – mostly because the government (and the Electoral Commission) lost sight of some basic marketing principles. Police & Crime Commissioners may indeed by a better mousetrap but unless you tell people about this – repeatedly until you’re bored with the sound of it – they won’t avail themselves of your improved rodent catcher.

However, this still doesn’t matter. If people want to vote they will go out and vote. Take note that in Corby where 90% of the UK’s political class – not to mention the hordes of press and TV media folk – has been camped out for the past two months, the turnout was a measly 44%. Every house in Corby had a leaflet – probably a dozen leaflets, if by-election behaviour was normal – and despite this over half the registered electorate didn’t bother.

Why didn’t they bother? Probably because the outcome (and the act of voting itself) really doesn’t matter to them very much, if at all. And why should it unless we make it purposeful? A parliamentary by-election changes nothing, all it does is find a new representative to fill a set of vacated boots. Oddly enough the PCC elections were rather more significant – at least there we were picking someone to be in charge of something!

In an unusual departure the Daily Mail spots the problem:

The reality is that the public is hugely disillusioned with a gilded, out-of-touch political elite which seems incapable of connecting with the aspirations and anxieties of ordinary people.

People really are getting to believe that “it doesn’t matter how you vote, the government always gets in”.  And this is so true – that gilded elite the Mail describes will carry on in ‘power’ even though we vote some of them out and some of them in.

The really funny – or maybe depressing - thing about this is that it’s not new. Here’s S E Finer writing about the world’s first government, Sumer:

“Equally there was a contrast between the mass of artisans and rural labourers, and the ruling elite which comprised the rulers and their courts, the temples and their priesthoods, the scribes and accountants. This elite was very narrow; the more so since the keys to power...were so very difficult to acquire.”

Back then legitimacy – what we like to call “mandate” – didn’t come from those artisans and rural labourers but from the gods. Today, legitimacy in theory comes, via the act of voting, from the people. The thing that those apathetic Britons have spotted is that withdrawing that mandate by not voting exposes the elite for what it is – a self-selecting, self-supporting court surrounding the places where power is executed.

Thursday’s apathy isn’t a reflection on the current government but a consequence of government by the unaccountable gilded by the thinnest sheet of democracy. When I look at the areas where us Councillors are told we have no real jurisdiction (despite de jure responsibility) this becomes ever more clear – education, child protection, planning, licensing; all now so rules bound as to make the councillor’s role little more than a rubber stamp.

To give just one example – you thought, did you not, that the schools are under “council control”? After all there’s an Education Department filled with Directors and Assistant Directors. Think again. The funding goes straight from Whitehall to the schools via a formula set in London. And decisions about the management of those schools are made by a thing called the “School’s Forum” that (in Bradford) meets in private and contains representatives from the schools, council officers and so forth. Councillor’s – the folk you elect to make decisions on your behalf – have no role to play in this at all. Except to be blamed when the school’s fail.

This is where the apathy comes from – MPs and councillors stop being representatives and turn instead into guides through the castle. Our role is to handle ‘casework’ and to act as ‘community leaders’ rather than the idea of representative democracy – that we send someone to the place where the decisions are made so he or she can help make those decisions on our behalf. Today, a councillor or MP can sit on all sorts or panels, committees and boards while doing nothing other than accede to decisions made elsewhere by the bureaucracy.

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