How Westminster Works ...and Why It Doesn’t
Ian Dunt
Having read it
★★★★★
A good insight (and a well researched one) of a broken system that really does need fixing, not preserving and seems to just encourage pointless competition, machismo, partisanship and a complete lack of scrutiny of the people (and what they think up for) ‘running the show’.
The Westminster system has long been broken and is in dire need of real, meaningful change and this book certainly brings forth a fair bit of ‘What!’ and ‘Why the hell do they have to do that?!’.
Overall though, the book clarifies and adds to the politic and democratic conversation of our poor setup (despite the beneficial Select Committees that can and do offer real knowledge, expertise, debate and consideration and scrutiny).
Hopefully words like these will continue to help the long, slow fight to encourage some to make and find more ways to affect (and hopefully start) real, long-lasting, systemic changes. Or maybe even encourage and get the damn ‘ode to the past’ knocked down and its people moved somewhere else as a starting point for really bringing about modern changes to and for the nation/country.
Here’s a passage to end and like most things involving heritage (and tradition) in Britain, Westminster (and every stately home, etc. as well!) holds society and progress for all, back...
There is just tradition: it must be done this way because it has always been done this way. But this is not an argument, it is entropy garnished with sentimentality. Government is important. Its successes improve the lives of millions and its failures ruin them. It is not the place for nostalgia.
Downing Street’s chief value is as a museum, and that is what it should become. That hallowed sense Thatcher spoke of, of being in the room where the decisions were made through history, should be made available to all. It should not be restricted to No. 10 staff nor be allowed to dictate their degree of operational competence.
A good passage
This country sees long-lasting, deep-set structural problems go permanently unresolved: social care, productivity, the state of the NHS, regional economic imbalance, an irrational tax system. The list could run for pages. At the same time, it is a frenzy of activity, much of it completely pointless, a lot of it positively harmful. The latest attempt by a minister, or prime minister, to look like they’re doing something while accomplishing nothing at all or undoing that which has been accomplished previously.
The British political system rewards short-term tactics over long-term strategy, irrationality over reason, amateurism over seriousness, generalism over specialism and gut instinct over evidence. Probation is just one of countless stories about how successive governments in Britain have failed to operate with anything even approaching basic competence. They do not know what they are doing. They do not even attempt to know what they are doing. And then, when things go wrong, they do not learn from what happened.
A second good passage
The tyranny of metrics pushed journalism towards what interested the public and away from the public interest.
[...]
Instead of patience, the dominance of metrics pushed in precisely the opposite direction. One of the core triggers that reliably provides page views is outrage. In political journalism, there is arguably no stronger motivating factor in reader behaviour. And the same applies to social media, where vitriol, condemnation and vociferous expressions of emotional disapproval typically result in a strong response from fellow users. News desks soon found that these expressions of online outrage could be fed into the editorial machine, being cheaply repackaged as stories that attracted huge numbers of page views with barely any editorial time needed to write them.
[...]
The combination of technological and constitutional change had served to amplify journalism’s weaknesses and quieten its strengths. And as the financial pressures continue and the spad system grows, there is little sign of it resisting.
A third good passage
Many frontbench politicians have stories of the times they fought to improve a piece of legislation despite it doing them no good whatsoever. ‘We do it despite the system,’ Labour frontbencher Lisa Nandy says, ‘not because of the system. That’s the problem with British politics. Everything from our electoral system to our way of governing and debating and voting – it’s all set up to be a fight. One side wins, the other side loses. But most of the challenges we face are in shades of grey, not black and white. When it works it’s because you’ve thwarted the system that you’re stuck in.’