Is the UK Government strategically incompetent – thus undermining the notion of rational governance?

Edinburgh August 4

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I took part in a You Gov poll yesterday – the question was “Is the UK Government incompetent?” Apparently, 49% agree they are incompetent while just 25% said they were competent. I can exclusively reveal that of people who answered yes to: ‘is the UK government incompetent’ – only 1% regard PM Boris Johnson as competent.

Is this a problem for the Government? Not necessarily, argues Nick Currie, lecturer in criminology at Napier University. “In part their incompetence may be functional – if they undermine the notion that you can have a rational government which can improve the lives of citizens in a meaningful way”.

This then would be ‘strategic incompetence’ – people conclude that all politicians are hopeless and that governing the country is best left to market forces, undisturbed by the feeble minions of the state. In that case, it doesn’t much matter which lot is elected.

It would be a bedfellow for what has been called ‘strategic lying’ – that is the kind that was practised in the Brexit campaign, where you put a figure on the side of a bus like £350 million more for the NHS. Whenever people call that into question or spend time disproving it they simply increase awareness of the initial claim.

This sort of cynical trickery might work – it obviously can work – in campaigning. What about in government? Linking up headline policies with what happens on the ground takes concentrated effort, compromise, team work. Without that, the UK Government’s declared goals on things like levelling up or reducing carbon emissions are bootless. Does this matter?

Right-wing comment writer Jan Daley in a piece for the Telegraph headlined “Beware Boris – we voters recognise an empty slogan when we see one” compared the current UK government’s policies unfavourably to Tony Blair’s Third Way “I remember fondly the willingness of Blairite ministers to come to lunch with Conservative commentators like me and argue tirelessly about their plans and intentions. Whatever the chances of the Third Way succeeding, they were really thinking about what they were saying for public consumption. There was more to this than empty phrase-making.”

This was the policy that in partnership with the private sector delivered new hospitals and schools across the UK. There was much criticism of PFI – but the buildings got built, and they were much needed at the time.

What will “levelling up” deliver? Daley argues that without a degree of competence, the current government will lose support.

However, if the real goal of strategic incidence is to damage people’s faith in the possibility of a better future created by government, it may be effective to the extent that the cynical faction which controls the Conservative party clings on to power in the UK for the foreseeable future.