Bluffocracy

One of the more refreshing books I have come across in recent months is Bluffocracy by James Ball and Andrew Greenway in which the authors make the point that far too many people making important government or business decisions are not really qualified to do so. It is the perfect riposte to Michael Gove’s 2016 remark that “the people of this country have had enough of experts.” What experts would these be? After all, Gove was at the time Lord Chancellor – an ancient legal position whose primary responsibility is the efficient functioning and independence of the courts. Maybe his stellar legal career following law study qualified him for the post? But his academic studies in English literature followed by a subsequent career as a journalist probably suggests that his knowledge of the legal system was less than many of the hardened criminals who come into regular contact with the judicial process.

It is unfair to single out Michael Gove: Most ministers these days are generalists with little business experience before entering politics. The system of employing generalists does have some advantages. Most high ranking politicians are clearly intelligent people who have the ability to master a large amount of detail very quickly (Boris Johnson would appear to be an exception to this rule, however). As a result they are rapidly able to get up to speed with their brief and look at problems in different ways, which can result in some genuinely innovative policymaking. However, it can also result in some very bad policy outcomes.

Of course, there is nothing new in the idea of the generalist politician – it has been a defining picture of the British landscape for decades. But this is where civil servants are supposed to come into their own. Politicians may be here-today, gone-tomorrow occupants of state office but they are backed by permanent secretaries with years of experience in their field who are able to nudge ministers away from making egregious policy mistakes. Except that these days, civil servants are encouraged to broaden their experience by frequently swapping jobs, with the result that much of knowledge they build up in one role is lost as they go off to do something else.

This highlights one of the main features of our Bluffocracy – a culture of short-termism. Economic policies are often made on the basis of how they will play in the press rather than their economic impact. A case in point is the austerity programme followed by the British government over the past eight years. Continually chipping away at public outlays was always going to lead to damage to the social fabric in ways which were predictable, but which were ignored by a government whose agenda appeared to be geared towards the ideological goal of shrinking the size of the state. Faced with the crisis in the NHS; concerns about police numbers and ongoing criticism of the UK’s defence policy, today’s politicians have an awful lot to do to pick up the pieces.

Another element of the Bluffocracy is the apparent inability of the media to hold the government to account. To use the fiscal policy example once more, the electorate was repeatedly told that the Labour Party had wrecked public finances in 2008 and that if the UK did not put in place measures to cut public outlays, it would end up in the same fiscal position as Greece. Both statements are untrue: The fiscal collapse was due to the economic downturn triggered by the global recession and there was no chance of the UK ending up as another Greece since it issued all its debt in its own currency (and around 75% is domestically owned). Apart from some of the specialist economics journalists, the vast majority of journalists merely parroted the government’s words without probing the statement more deeply. One possible reason for this is that many of the journalists are generalists with no real understanding of the issues they are writing about (True story: I once had to explain to a journalist how to calculate a percentage change).

Seen in this light, Brexit is the logical conclusion of Bluffocracy. The referendum was called by a prime minister who was very able but who tended to have a better grasp of tactics than strategy. David Cameron’s famed ability to get himself out of sticky situations at the last minute – most notably during the Scottish independence referendum of 2014 – gave him a sense of confidence that he did not have to work too hard to get the result he wanted. This policy backfired disastrously in June 2016. Moreover, he was out-bluffed by bluffers who painted a picture of how wonderful life would be outside the EU and how easy it would be for the UK to get the deal it wanted. Not only did large parts of the media not hold the Brexiteers to account, they actually cheered them on.

Even now, as the reality of negotiating with the rules-based EU indicates how difficult Brexit will be, the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg continue to blithely insist that if his plans are followed Brexit will deliver the long-promised utopia. I am not sure which one of the following statements is true, but one of them is: Rees-Mogg et al perfectly understand the difficulties associated with Brexit but choose to lie about it, in which case they should surely be disqualified from representative office on the grounds of misleading the public. Or they really believe their Brexit fantasies, in which case they should surely be disqualified from representative office on the grounds of incompetence.

But this is the new Bluffocracy in which people can get away with spouting nonsense with very little sanction. As Ball and Greenway wrote in The Spectator: “Can things change? Not in Westminster anytime soon. It’s hard to look at modern frontbenchers and see much hope there in the short-run. As for Whitehall: it is 160 years since the civil service had a genuinely comprehensive look at itself, and an examination is overdue. But if history is any guide, a decent-sized war is probably the only reliable way of getting this done … We will always need generalists to master new situations quickly … But the balance of power has moved too far in the bluffers’ favour — at a time when the country is crying out for some proper expertise. It’s time to reshape our institutions to let the experts in, to reward serious knowledge. We need a system that works, and experts who are willing to join it.”