Things Can Only Get Better
Originally published by the Local Government Chronicle – 11/01/2024
News of the recent sad and untimely death of New Labour vanguard and disgraced lobbyist turned psychotherapist Derek ‘Dolly’ Draper brought pangs of nostalgia. Cue a deluge of ‘1997 and all that’, ‘Things can only get better’ vibes tempered with the expectation and mild excitement of what novelties a Keir Starmer government might bring.
The past is never a sure guide, but perhaps there are some relevant and historical comparisons political lessons for us to draw from in how New Labour’s avowed agenda for modernising government unfolded.
A quarter of a century ago, there was for a time a small industry explaining and interpreting for laymen what the convoluted language of the Modernising Government White Paper meant for those unable to decipher the ‘third way’ code of political language.
Modernising Government as a governing philosophy was founded on unwavering faith in the emerging if untried technology at the dawn of the internet age (nobody really had a clue what the ‘global superhighway’ was about) and innovative management consultancy tricks to galvanise the tired ‘new public service manager’ model.
While Starmer has the ultimate experienced Whitehall sherpa in Sue Gray as chief of staff able to refashion an exhausted central government machine, what energy and focus will there be on local government as an agent of delivery, and in what shape or form might this take?
Certainly, the bold promise to build 10 new towns and hit a first term building target of 1.5 million homes suggests the answers to housing, planning and infrastructure will be pushed upwards again to regional level and greater and closer central government involvement and support in the sinews of development.
While we will never, and for very good reason, see the like of John Prescott’s overweening Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), whatever final form Gray’s reshaping will have to navigate an emphasis on driving growth through a city-led focus the Metropolitan Combined Authorities while talking the talk on community empowerment.
Before showing willing to unlock the spending taps before the 2001 landslide, Gordon Brown’s first years as chancellor rigidly held to the spending envelope set by his predecessor Ken Clarke to prove Labour’s fiscal probity. This time around, Rachel Reeves as putative Labour chancellor will find headroom limited by a different and more troublesome set of inherited public finances – a trifecta of stagnant economic growth, the outcome of Jeremy Hunt’s March Budget and other machinations to set pre-electoral dividing lines on tax and the inexorably rising costs of servicing government debt to the detriment of spending on ever less productive public services.
But in the first New Labour term was able and largely without largesse able to champion an ecosystem for overhauling institutional performance and renewing structures.
This took various forms, from the clear steer to adopt cabinet systems of local government, the creation of the Local Government Association itself as the trade body for the sector, alongside this the genesis the Improvement and Development Agency to spark innovation. Holding the line for errant councillor behaviour the establishment of the Standards Board for England and a strengthened Audit Commission to bring direction and command and control managerialism to the level of place.
Again, given how much has been forever changed in the dramatically shrunken institutional landscape since 2010, and most especially the very tangible knock-on impacts to understanding local government’s financial position since the abolition of the Audit Commission, the scope for driving comparable change in the absence of money, capacity, energy and enthusiasm remains debatable.
So, when freed from the burdens of office, a telegenic Michael Gove launches onto the nation’s screens to rehabilitee himself in the manner of Michael Portillo, the sector will be left exposed to new prevailing winds. Whatever might happen to Oflog – and its remit to inform, warn and support – under a new regime, there will likely be headwinds corralling local government to provide better and more intuitive information on local service outcomes, to be ahead of the curve in financial warning indicators and upgrading the improvement offer in leadership and integrated service provision.
In this light, a Labour government might mean more homework, externally marked, once the sector’s immediate financial wounds have been staunched.