Is there substance behind the Starmer team’s talk of “mission-driven” government? Interesting piece by Jill Rutter, who has been thinking about how to make Whitehall better for years. As Rutter points out, Starmer seems to recognise he will have to devote substantial personal time to his missions if he is to make progress; he cannot delegate them to his cabinet let alone to officials. I worked at the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit in its heyday under Blair. Its authority fundamentally depended on the pageantry and presence of the prime minister, most notably at regular ‘stocktakes’ focused on his main domestic priorities. But in two other ways the Delivery Unit is an inexact parallel. First, Labour’s missions are deliberately conceived to exceed the remit of a single government department or to be reducible to single targets. For example, the health mission describes an NHS “that is there when people need it; with fewer lives lost to the biggest killers; in a fairer Britain, where everyone lives well for longer.” These objectives require concerted cross-government reforms, backed by dedicated resources allocated to make progress against a blend of shorter and (much) longer term targets. Second, mission-driven government is also meant to connote galvanising non-government actors, whether business or civil society, in service of its objectives. Peter Hyman, one of the key proponents of the approach (and also a former Blair advisor), is a sceptic of ‘deliverology’. He emphasises a mode of action in which the state catalyses but is not the sole or even the most important player. Catalytic government is an attractive political approach. Would a new Labour government stay the course when the going gets rough or will it instead be drawn back to more traditional methods as the pressure for results mounts? https://on.ft.com/3LeoBOs
Charlotte Augst
4mo
I have written something on this- happy to share with you if you were interested...
Advisor - strategy, governance, change mgt; Visiting Prof, Imperial College London; led Health Innovation Diffusion research; co-found/CE, Office for Public Management; former Director, Institute for Public Service Value
4moRutter makes some very good points, particularly about the interdependence of outcomes and working outside the institutional box (eg, NHS). Sadly, the “mission-driven” buy-in is a sop to Mazzucato (see her cringingly self-serving piece in The New Statesman last week) because - like George Bush (that turned out well!) - Keir doesn’t like “vision”, which is a picture that everyday people understand and, more important, can see themselves in. Give me delivery units anyday.