I read Sam Freedman’s Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It with a mixture of nods of recognition and gasps of disbelief. It’s all too apparent that – as the subtitle puts it – nothing works in aspects of life in the UK dependent in some way on the successful design and implementation of government policy (which is most aspects tbh). Those of us who have engaged with the policy world in some way will have our own experiences; the relevant chapters of the book reflect my own very accurately. What makes this an incredibly sobering book (although well-written, with humour) is the accumulation of evidence across all eight chapters, covering everything from parliament and the excessive growth of executive power, the House of Lords, political parties and the character of MPs, the judiciary, the criminal justice system, the civil service, local government, non-departmental public bodies and the media. A relentless accumulation of depressing dysfunction.
I’m very much on board with the book‘s main recommended fix, substantial devolution of power from central to sub-national governments – this is a journey I’ve been advocating since first getting involved with Greater Manchester’s case for greater powers from 2008 on. But this is not a simple matter. Many people point to the hollowing out of capacity in local government – true to some extent but one can see how to tackle that. Harder are the questions of accountability that raises. But – as the book argues – it’s hard to see any other plausible change that would shift the dial on interconnected institutional reforms. And equally hard to see how nothing can change: “Public trust in politicians and politics – never high – has crashed through the floor.” The governance travails of the Labour Government in the few weeks since the election suggest the time for something to change can’t be far away – surely? There has at least being slowly growing consensus about the need for decentralisation from Whitehall and Westminster, as a potentially feasible path for reducing the powers of an over-dominant executive branch that can’t deliver and can’t cope.
This book joins other incisive critiques and reviews of how the UK is governed – my colleague Mike Kenny led a major inquiry into the constitution, the Institute for Government documents failures across the board, and others such as Martin Stanley are excellent on specific aspects (the civil service and regulatory state in his case). It’s cold comfort that other countries are experiencing similar failures against a background of slow growth and hyper-fast social media, and colder still that in so many extremist parties are capturing the votes of despair. It’s a narrow path from today’s failures to a less disturbing outcome. The book ends posing a question to those in central government with the power and opportunity to start the process of change: if the UK goes down the path of crisis and reaction, “Politicians will find themselves asking: why didn’t we do things differently when we had the chance?”
