Politics with Alex

Overloaded. Overpowered. Overdrive. These are the three key areas for the dysfunction of the UK state identified by Sam Freedman in his illuminating and timely book Failed State. There are many books which have outlined the issues with Westminster and politics, some which which have been reviewed on this site such as How Westminster Works…and why it doesn’t and Code of Conduct among many others. Each take their own approach to diagnosing and attempting to solve the problems. Here, Freedman takes a different approach to other books, and the result demonstrates quite what a mess we are in.

Throughout the book, Freedman outlines with devastating clarity that the UK state has become overloaded with work; that the state has slowly crept into our lives in ways that were unimaginable even 100 years ago. His argument is not that the state should simply receed from these areas and leave it up to individuals as many Conservatives would wish, but rather that the state is just not structurally or institutionally set up to deal with administering such issues well. Take the example of local authority funding and powers; the UK is one of the most centralised democracies in the world, meaning that local authorities have very little power beyond what is handed to them by Westminster. Following years of austerity cuts, which fell very hardly on council budgets, there was an attempt through “Levelling up” to redress this. But even this scheme involved a centrally administered pot of cash, which local authorities spent significant sums of money bidding for against very opaque criteria.

These funds could much better be administered by and through councils themselves (against certain sucess criteria), but instead, a whole new level of state bureaucracy came into being. Structurally, the centre has refused to ceede power to the localities and instead over subsequent Government’s has hoarded it and contributed to the sense of overload. The fact that a Secretary of State, theoretically one of the most powerful politicians in the country, has to sign off local planning applications for certain projects is evidently ridiculous when they should be focusing on much larger national issues.

Freedmans next contention is that the state has become overpowered. That our system of Parliamentary democracy means that the Government of the day – as long as they have a parliamentary majority – can legislate for almost whatever they want. Freedman discusses the concern of skeleton bills and statutory instruments, which transfer huge powers to Secretaries of State without actually highlighting which powers they are being given or putting any meaningful checks and balances on their use. The use of such powers is becoming increasingly common and means that democractic accountability is harder and harder.

Failed State also tackles head on the idea that either the opposition in the Commons or the House of Lords has any real ability to scrutinise or amend legislation. Through the use of the Whips and their Parliamentary majority, the Government is able to ensure that any Bill, regardless of it’s quality of potential consequences, can clear the Commons. The Lords, as an unelected revising chamber, by precedent only attempts to amend or delay poor legislation and can’t prevent it. To do so would further undermine the public’s faith that an unelected second chamber should even exist.

The final part of the book, overdrive, argues that the modern media cycle is further causing issues with the effective running of the government machine. That the need to be in control of the story, and be seen to be doing things leads to a “random announcement generator”, whereby good sounding policies are pushed into the media in service of the “grid” or to distract from another issue or scandal, rather than as part of a proper legislative program. Freedman also points out here that while the past news organisations would have a raft of experts in each area of policy who would properly report on and scrutinise government announcments, due to declining revenues there is a dwindling pool of journalists who are expected to be experts in every possible area of politics. This means that one of the essential purposes of the press is not being delivered.

Failed State is a funny, well written and insightful delve behind the curtain that argues that far from being a recent issue due to our somewhat chaotic recent administrations, there is a much deeper structural and institutional reason why so many things in the UK seem to be falling apart. For those who want to understand some of the reasons why nothing seems to be working anymore and why it’s so challenging to change it, this book is fascinating and compelling to read. It may be Freedman’s first book, but let’s hope it’s not his last.  

Failed state is published by Macmillan and is available now