As Britain stumbles towards next year’s election, there is a sense almost of disgust with what both major parties have to offer. Not that the grim duopoly will be under much challenge, or that either party intends to mount a challenge to the ‘technocratic’ consensus which, for decades now, has degraded and eroded Britain as a nation.
Since the SDP is not yet going to be an available government, we’re stuck with what we’ve got, revolting though that prospect is.
Where did government and the politics which purports to shape it, go wrong? Is it like this for every developed country, or are we a special case in public incompetence and unresponsiveness?
Around this time last year the OECD published a large and detailed survey of attitudes towards government giving us a chance to compare Britain’s government with others in the OECD. Its highlights illuminate some of our discontents.
Let’s start with the good news: Britons are only moderately less trustful of its government than the average, with 34.8% saying they trust the government (0.5SDs below the OECD average), whilst 49.2% (0.6SDs above the average) do not. But they take a pretty much average view on whether the government treats rich and poor alike, with 41.3% (0.2SDs above average) thinking it probably does , vs 39.8% (0.3SDs above average) thinking it unlikely. That’s not catastrophic, and what’s more, we hold almost entirely average views on whether our civil servants would take a bribe, with 42% thinking they’d refuse (0.2SDs below average) and 37.3% thinking they probably would take a bribe ( 0.1SD below average).
Maybe overt bribery isn’t the British way. But there’s bribery and then there’s political corruption. The OECD asked specifically whether we’d expect a high-level public official would grant a political favour in exchange for the offer of a well-paid private sector job. The answer for the OECD as a whole was that 30.4% thought they’d refuse, but 47.8% - nearly half - thought they’d do it.
Perhaps to protect national sensitivities, this was one table where the results were not broken down by nationality.
Probably most to protect British sensitivities, because . . . well, take a look at the chart below.
Revolving Door Corruption
Even without having the numbers published, it’s clear Britain is an international outlier. My best reading of the chart is that slightly under a quarter of Brits think our public sector establishment wouldn’t do favours if there was a private sector job in it for them, whilst upwards of 60% think they would.
The revolving door has golden hinges.
And considering the performance of Britain’s ‘regulators’ what other conclusion could you possibly draw? The poster boy for the revolving door/regulatory capture has long been the disgrace that is Ofwat. But who would want to laud the regulators of our rail system, our National Grid, the NHS, the City, the environment, or indeed any of a broad smorgasbord of Britain’s regulation? There’s a quick summary of my take on this in ‘Not Honours, but Scorn.’ Since I published that, of course, there has been the most shocking disgrace of all, as ethics-gauleiter Sue Gray blithely broke the rules separating public/private and government/politics she was paid lavishly to patrol.
Britain’s belief in the quiet corruption of our public life has consequences- notably there’s a gap where the public sector serving the public should be. When asked whether Britain’s national policies adapt to reflect the public’s views, only 30.4% find that likely (0.8SDs below average), whilst 51% - over half - think it unlikely (that’s 1.5SDs above the OECD average).
And if you complain about public services, are the likely to improve? Only 34.5% think that likely (0.7SDs below average), whilst 48.5% think it unlikely (1.3SDs above average).
In Britain’s democracy, do we have a say in a govt decisions ? Just 24% say yes (0.6SDs below OECD av), whilst 58.4% say we do not (0.7SDs above average).
These are not results to gloat about. Rather, they are evidence that the erosion of our public life, and our political representation, needs to reverse. The indifference of those governing us to the broader public, so perceptively identified by SDP leader William Clouston, has done, and is doing, real damage to the nation. So far as I can tell, no other party recognizes that the job which needs doing now is nothing less than nation-building. But it is, I’m sorry to say, still a Long March.