Ministers have to be politicians too

Andrew Lansley remains the Health Secretary for now. But, as this blog has long pointed out, he was a disaster waiting to happen. Before the election, he said he wouldn't reform the NHS (apart from in some secret memo that he sent to himself). His initial health reforms were incoherent, and hampered by his daft insistence that he was scrapping Labour's hugely successful floor targets, even though he wasn't quite doing so. This sent a signal to the system that they could push more people onto longer waits. Which they did in too many cases. When he was forced into making a major U-turn on GP commissioning - effectively removing the compulsory element - he pretended he had made no concessions at all. Which was pretty stupid, at a time when his coalition partners were demanding concessions. So, now David Cameron is being forced to expend huge political capital keeping a hopeless minister who doesn't do politics.


But Lansley is not the only political accident waiting to happen. Iain Duncan Smith may be a more likeable character, but he shares some Lansley traits - a lack of political skill and an enormous self-belief - and his plans have disaster written all over them. The Duncan-Smith reforms make perfect sense, of course, and are right in principle. It is right to aim for a single simpler universal credit, and it is pretty indefensible to be arguing that a £26k benefits limit (net) is too low. It would have been better politics to recognise the need for some regional differentials at the outset: call it a London weighting, perhaps. But because Duncan-Smith isn't really much of a politician - his politics, like that of Lansley, is limited to a sneering pretence that nobody else has ever executed any reforms of any worth in this area, especially the last Labour government. And because the echo chamber that is the Tory press cheers him on, he is convinced he will succeed. However, the Treasury expects Duncan-Smith to fail. George Osborne apparently makes no secret of his disdain for a project that relies on one failsafe mechanism for success: Government computer procurement.

Lansley and Duncan-Smith both profess expertise in their fields. But they lack the skill to sell or see through their grand ideas. The last few years may have given politics a bad name, but politics is vital to the successful delivery of change. A good politician exaggerates the concessions he or she has made to win over critics; a bad one pretends he has made none. Health and welfare reform were two of the coalition's big ideas. It is a mark of Cameron's poor people judgement that be put the two ministers least likely to deliver them successfully in charge. The PM is said to have an aversion to reshuffles. And Tony Blair reshuffled too many people too often. But if he wants to salvage either of these key reforms, Cameron needs to overcome his aversion. And he needs to do so pretty quickly.

The real reformers

Irwin Stelzer, the American commentator who is close to Rupert Murdoch, has a fascinating piece in this morning's Daily Telegraph. Stelzer has always been fairly matey with Gordon Brown, but has blown hot and cold of late, and retains his scepticism in this piece about his tax policy. However, his judgment that the welfare and health reforms being introduced by James Purnell and Alan Johnson are radical will send shivers down Conservative spines, not least because they stand in such marked contrast to David Cameron's approach of closing down serious discussion on both issues.

Stelzer also notes that Ed Balls has raised the rhetoric against 'excuses' in education, though it is actually through continuing with academies and forcing change on schools that gain below-par GCSEs that the children's secretary is making a real difference. Unlike Johnson and Purnell, Balls has in Michael Gove a rare Tory opponent, whose understanding of his brief and reforming instincts (even if one doesn't always agree with his solutions) stand in marked contrast to the vacuous Theresa May at welfare and the BMA lobbyist Andrew Lansley at health.

With the recession, it would be tempting for Gordon Brown to ignore the importance of reform in these areas. But if the recovery is to be successful, we need to improve access to health and patients' choices, we need to get long term unemployed people back to work and we need better school results. After some initial suggestions that he was backtracking on the agenda initiated by Tony Blair, there are many encouraging signs that the Prime Minister is keen to pursue a reform agenda. He must continue to find the time to devote to it in these difficult economic times.

Tories abandon welfare reform

Tory bloggers, including the Spectator's Coffee House, are in despair. Not only is Clarke back, but the appointment of Theresa May to shadow James Purnell is rightly seen as a sign that the Tories have not only sidelined NHS reform in a bid to appease the BMA, they have also given up on welfare room too. As James Forsyth notes:

Today’s reshuffle was a blow to the reform agenda. This morning, two of the three key public service jobs—education, welfare and health—were in the hands of committed reformers. Now, only education is.....Tory health policy has been subcontracted out to the British Medical Association. But on education and welfare there were signs of real boldness.... But the decision to replace Chris Grayling with Theresa May calls into question the Tory commitment to fixing Britain’s broken welfare system....thedecision to move May to this brief suggests that the Tories are now happy just to score cheap political points about Purnell’s desire to have single mothers prepare to enter the workforce.

What now for Brown after Glasgow East?

There weren't even the top-hatted toff mockers to blame this time. Labour had an excellent candidate in Margaret Curran and ran a super-professional campaign. But it didn't do enough to prevent the SNP from snatching the seat by a few hundred votes. Glasgow East should be the signal of what needs to change in Labour. And that change needs to come from the top, rather more than at the top.

It is good that Gordon Brown is taking a decent holiday this year. But he needs to make it a holiday, and stop sending lots of emails to his staff and trying to micromanage events from his Southwold holiday home. Instead he needs to reflect on how to start the party's recovery in the autumn. Of course, the economy will be crucial: Labour can have little hope of recovery while people experience double-digit food and fuel increases, and see their home values diving.

But, an economic recovery of itself will not be enough. Brown's problem is not just a lack of empathetic engagement - though that is a problem for a modern politician - it is also a fear of spelling out a clear sense of purpose, including just how radical his government is being, which hides notable successes in aspects of the public services such as health and education (marking fiascos aside). Public satisfaction with the NHS is now at record highs; this is thanks to the investment and reforms introduced by the Labour governments, which has meant more frontline staff, much lower waiting lists and better equipped hospitals and surgeries. Yet, in polls, the public say they trust the Tories - whose main policy is to dismantle Labour's successes on orders from the BMA - more than Labour on the NHS. On education, a daft decision to create 'distance' from Tony Blair on academies in the first months of Brown's premiership has obscured their subsequent rapid and hugely popular expansion. Crime is falling fast - as even Tory commentators acknowledge, even if they want the credit given elsewhere. And the government has been radical on welfare reform this week.

Yet, there is no sense that Labour is making the political weather. The Tories, whose policy differences with Labour on the subject are relatively small and draw heavily on academies, are seen as having all the ideas on education. Even on welfare reform, where the work had been done before any Tory policy commission was born, many commentators were persuaded that Labour was just copying their ideas.

That's where the big change is needed. Tony Blair was very good at developing and disseminating a clear political narrative. With Gordon Brown, there is no such narrative, so nobody from the commentariat to the common voter can understand what's happening. This failure may owe something to the schizophrenic attempt to create novelty in the first months of Brown's tenure. If so, the time for real clarity is overdue. That means selecting half a dozen very clear goals for the government, on which Brown devotes most of his energy. He should leave the micro-management to his ministers, and where necessary, to his policy aides, but work relentlessly on those goals. These goals should be spelt out at the party conference in September, and he should devote considerable energy and the time of his delivery, strategy and policy people to seeing them being delivered. Any reshuffle should be done with this in mind, ensuring strong ministers who can communicate effectively leading on these goals.

None of this will require a huge change in policy direction. The last few months have, ironically, been the most productive and radical of Brown's tenure to date. But they will require a big change in approach by Brown and his team. Brown should enjoy his holiday, despite the Glasgow East result, and leave the day-to-day business to Alastair Darling and Jack Straw. After all, when he returns, he needs to be physically and mentally refreshed if his to defy the psephologists and establish the clarity of purpose that could - with an economic upturn - start to restore Labour's fortunes.

Getting serious on IB

It is true that there have been many attempts to get to grips with the problem of Incapacity Benefit, and the absurd number of people who claim eligibility to it. Ever since the Tories used it to massage the unemployment figures in the eighties, IB has been a route to lifelong benefit dependency for many. This is why James Purnell's measures today are welcome - and necessary. It is another sign that this government is being radical in its reforms, and as James points out in a well-argued piece in today's Guardian, another sign that Labour is grasping its responsibilities to tackle poverty. I do have some sympathy with Frank Field's argument that the real problem with IB is that it pays more than Jobseekers' Allowance; a better reform might be to focus extra help through Disability Living Allowance - which helps people with disabilities to work - rather than the replacement for IB. Nevertheless, this is a big start and one deserving of support.