Why is British politics stuck? A new report by Phil Tinline, Policy Associate at The Future Governance Forum (FGF), argues that power has become overly concentrated at the national level – only to be dispersed again, to the point where responsibility sits nowhere. This makes change incredibly hard to achieve, leaving voters disempowered, and destroying trust in politicians and their ‘empty promises’.
Power Failure: A new theory of power argues that to deliver the change it promised, the government must reverse this process. This means thinking rigorously and intentionally about power in a way governments often fail to do: identifying what drove this shift across a range of policy areas, from monetary policy, via privatisation and outsourcing, to housing policy and immigration.
The report sets out how old 1970s fears about the state have left it with too much power to block, and not enough power to act effectively, eroding its capacity even as it passes ever more laws. Those same old fears make reversing this process seem politically ‘impossible’. But if government is to restore the state’s ability to deliver its promises, it must now overcome such entrenched ideas, and the people who defend them. As Phil says in the report, ‘This will mean confronting an uncertain future by relying less on predictions and rules which reinforce the status quo, and more on the government’s central mission – to improve life for ordinary working people, come what may.’
Phil’s report sets out 16 recommendations for government to put a new theory of power into action, including:
- Reasserting the primacy of the democratically elected government over the Bank of England – not by abolishing its independence, but by politely reminding the Bank whence its authority is derived, inviting it into a closer, more co-operative relationship, and regularly reviewing its mandate on the public’s behalf.
- Freeing businesses from unnecessary complexity and risk aversion in return for greater acceptance of regulation that protects consumers and market competition, and fosters innovation.
- Using procurement more proactively to favour businesses that can demonstrate that they pay their taxes, and/or whose approach benefits the public by rejecting narrow shareholder primacy, along with social enterprises.
- Phasing out government reliance on generalist consultancies in favour of rebuilding in-house capability by investing the cost of renewing such contracts in civil service skills and capacity, and reforming procurement policy to remove the incentive for such contracts.
- Turning the Ministry of Housing into a mission-driven task force to convene regular meetings with developers, utility companies and local authorities to identify and remove blockages.
Phil Tinline, FGF Policy Associate, said, “Today many people believe that nothing works and that those who are supposedly in charge are either useless or just don’t care – a theory of power that is corroding trust. Yet this government has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver a major shift in where power lies.
“To make people’s lives better I’ve made sixteen recommendations to government, based around recasting the state as the public’s most powerful representative. With trust in government at such low levels, if this administration fails to show that mainstream democratic politics can deliver, our country faces the real threat of far-right populists winning power and doing irreparable damage.”
