Learning from the BBC

How many senior managers does it take to run the BBC?

Apparently it’s quite a lot less, 18% less to be precise, than previously thought according to the BBC Trust which has agreed to proposals from the Executive to cut the senior management pay bill by around 25% over the next three and a half years.

Other savings will come from freezing pay and bonuses for senior management until 2010 as part of a larger plan to cut a whopping £1.7 billion from costs between now and 2013.

Wow.  18% less senior staff!  Savings of £1.7 billion.  What a veritable feeding trough this must have been in recent years; a perfect illustration of how the interests of senior staff can diverge from that of the organization and its shareholders (the public in this case). 

Actually the salary and bonus savings are likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.   The primary cause of inefficiency is not too many staff and an inflated wage bill, bad as that is, but the organizational constipation they cause as they get in each other’s way.  All those staff have to do something, and when there are too many of them they invent work, creating endless and pointless meetings and paperwork, hoarding information, diffusing responsibility and playing (company) politics.   Trust me, I’ve been there, I’ve got the tee shirt.

But if the BBC is top-heavy and over-managed, what of central government?   I suspect the BBC is positively slimline by comparison.  Think about it; most long-established major industries have in turn experienced an existential crisis which has forced root and branch reform – think shipbuilding, coal, steel, motor manufacturing, telecoms and so on.   Some have failed to make the change, others have gone on to thrive (though often under foreign ownership).  The one obvious holdout, protected until now by the endless generosity of the taxpayer, is government.

Well, this party is about to end.  A country needs a government just as a large and diversified company needs a head office but it must add value and it can only do this if it is small and efficient.  If it gets too large it becomes inefficient and self-serving and subtracts value.  That sadly, is what HMG too often does.

Which is why I have always disagreed with the plan to save $20 billion from government spending.   It’s simply too small; it implies leaving the system basically unchanged and making it just a bit more cost-efficient round the edges.  For heavens sake!  If the BBC can find £1.7 billion after a few months what is the potential across government?  £200 billion is probably nearer the mark because that implies a root and branch change in the way government works.

It’s long overdue.

 

Stuck in a rut – but we can break free

Mark Thompson asks why we’re not doing better in the polls.   As he observes we are in the worst financial crisis in most people’s living memory, the government is deeply unpopular and out of ideas, politics itself is in crisis and politicians are seen as remote and untrustworthy;  yet for all this the Liberal Democrats are stuck at only around 20%, in the polls.  Clearly, something is very wrong.

The difficulty as I see it is that we have got stuck in a rut, winning a measure of success as a (largely) protest party, but with little idea of how to get out of the rut.  So, where are we going wrong and what do we need to change?  

There is so much one could say on this subject that I will confine myself for now to just two things that we should stop doing.    In a later post (or maybe posts) I will consider things we should do differently.

Firstly, we should stop complaining about the unfairness of the media and the voting system.   Of course they’re unfair (what do you expect?) but if we use that as an excuse it  becomes all too easy to stop right there and never get on with the things we can do.   If we had a coherent understanding of where the the country was at and what we would do about it, we would certainly get reported.  Vince Cable has shown that this works; unfortunately he is seen as a sage distinct from the wider party.  The conclusion is surely that developing a compelling narrative is a top priority; once this is done the ‘media problem’ will solve itself. 

Secondly, we should stop being so complacent.  After the last general election and yet another bad defeat, the Tories debated briefly what their strategy should be.  They all agreed (after debating in very much these terms) that it came down to a straight choice between (a) a radical reform of their platform, and (b) a ‘one more heave’ approach.   Almost without exception Conservatives from all wings of the party understood from the outset that the ‘one more heave’ strategy was, in fact, a hiding to nothing and that they had to change, distasteful as it might be to many.  The issue for the ensuing leadership debate was then what sort of change and, as we now know, that was won by Cameron.   His platform?  An superficially greener, more liberal interpretation of Conservatism based on an accurate perception of a gap in the market created by the weakness of the Liberal Democrats rather than on any ideological conviction.

Contrast this with the response of the Liberal Democrats;  we had no debate but just blithely assumed that, of course, it was back to ‘one more heave’;  it’s what Liberal Democrats do, it’s what we’ve always done.   In doing so we effectively surrendered any chance of winning the forthcoming election preferring instead to reheat and represent policies that voters had just rejected by a large margin.  Only now, belatedly, are we beginning that debate.  (Which makes me think that the election after 2010 might at last be the breakthrough). 

As Mark hypothesizes, this is the best chance we have had in decades.  It’s up to us whether we choose to throw it away or run with it.

The ostrich strategy (European edition)

The European elections will be on us before we know it so it was pleasing to find a well produced leaflet from my MEP on the mat with the strap-line “reporting back to you in 2009″.  While not strictly a campaign leaflet, it’s timing cannot be accidental!

Unfortunately, the early promise is not sustained; the stories covered are:

• Saving post offices – MEP working with local campaigners and councillors to save them.
• Campaigning for investment – MEP again with a councillor and blaming the local Labour council for false starts on regeneration.
• Renewable energy and recycling – the new three-bin recycling is proving popular with residents in the flagship Lib Dem council in the area and is endorsed by MEP.
• Fighting a local landfill site – MEP represented residents after the site operator breached four of its operating conditions.
• Home heating – MEP says cavity and loft insulation should be a government priority to save energy and prevent climate change.
• Green jobs – our MEP has negotiated a Directive which will ensure that 20% of all EU energy comes from renewable sources by 2020.
• Standing up for consumers – MEP has reported EasyJet to the CAA after passengers complained the airline has not been complying with EU rules when flights are delayed or cancelled.

All good stuff no doubt but mainly relevant for a local council election.   The European dimension – where it exists at all - is extremely weak and confined to low level complaint handling or legislating that specified outcomes MUST happen by a safely remote future date.

Now I’ve no beef with the MEP concerned who is a thoroughly decent and hardworking individual and who recently circulated a newsletter to members in the region which actually mentions some European issues.   

What I DO have a beef with is a Party and a campaign that is afraid to speak its name; that succeeds in almost entirely avoiding Europe and which, when it does tangentially mention Europe, has no narrative whatsoever – no concept of how Europe fits into the scheme of things.   There not even a basic awareness that different tiers of government have different responsibilities – and that this matters.   Just how stupid do we think the voters are?

We have gone from the uncritical enthusiasm for all things Euro of a few years ago to a kind of embarrassed silence while hoping that no-one will notice.  Yes, it’s the ostrich strategy.

We do not support Labour simply because they are the government and we support democracy.  So why do we support everything EU however bad, however abusive of power and position, simply because we support the idea of a pan-European government to handle pan-European issues? 

I passionately support the concept of a European Union that is constitutionally mandated to take responsibility for those things (and only those things) that national or local government cannot effectively handle.   I reject the notion that the (socialist-inspired) gravy train version of the EU we now have is the only option.  What nonsense!

It’s not even as if there were any shortage of EU-relevant themes (some of which might even prove electorally popular) that we might usefully adopt, for instance:

• Democracy in Europe - bullying small nations to vote again until they get the ‘right’ answer is no way to behave.  Whatever its rights and wrongs the Lisbon Treaty is dead by the Irish vote.  Had Britain and France been allowed to vote, both countries would have massively rejected it.  This makes a mockery of any claim to legitimacy.
• Reforming the CAP – it should be ‘repatriated’ leaving each country to make its own arrangements.  I know this would cause apoplexy in Paris and be vetoed, but so what?  Silence can only be construed as tacit support for a scheme that taxes ordinary people to subsidise (mainly) large landowners.  From Antony Hook I learn that Labour has vetoed a limit on payments to rural oligarchs.   Brown should be made to pay for this at the polls.
•  Reforming fisheries – the EU regime was not actually intended to cause massive damage to both fish and fisheries – it just happens to work like that with (at times) simultaneous subsidies for new boats and restrictions to preserve fish stocks.  Clever stuff!
• Reforming Brussels – the nonsense of EU accounting (or lack of!) and its profligate ways is a target the size of a barn and Lib Dems actually have a good story to tell following good work to expose abuses.   So why keep quiet about it?

All this would be bad enough if it began and ended with Europe but it doesn’t;  there is obviously ‘cross talk’ between themes in Europe and themes in domestic politics.  How can anyone take Liberal Democrats seriously when democracy in Europe is not central to their agenda?  What are we to make of a Party that proclaims its commitment to fairness but in practice has nothing to say about oligarchs?

Others are not so confused.  UKIP have a perfectly clear, if entirely detestably, narrative.   Now Libertas has entered the fray as a pro-Europe Party committed to “creating a new democratic and open European Union. … A Europe for and of the people” – a far more liberal vision of European possibilities than any articulated by Cowley Street.

Europe should be a positive for us but we need some coherent leadership to get to that point.

The basis of our political choices

From TED comes this lecture by psychologist Jonathan Haidt on the moral values that are the basis of our political choices (length about 19 mins).

Enjoy.

Sarah Palin and the Political Mind

McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin has certainly stirred up the Democrat-leaning blogosphere and now even the mass-media are moving to question her suitability as VP.

But, as George Lakoff (of Rockridge Institute fame) warns in a fine piece of analysis, elections turn not so much on policy specifics as on how the candidates and their policies are cognitively framed in voters’ minds.

The Democratic responses so far reflect external realities: she is inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government to enter women’s lives to block abortion, but not wanting the government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a radical right-wing ideologue.

All true, so far as we can tell.

But such truths may nonetheless be largely irrelevant to this campaign. That is the lesson Democrats must learn. They must learn the reality of the political mind.

And in understanding this reality Conservative Republicans have a long lead.  Since Reagan they have been framing issues in Conservative ways so that from long repetition these have become familiar, safe and, well, right in the eyes of many voters.  As Lakoff puts it:

She has the image of the ideal conservative mom: pretty, perky, feminine, Bible-toting, and fitting into the ideal conservative family. And she fits the stereotype of America as small-town America. It is Reagan’s morning-in-America image. Where Obama thought of capturing the West, she is running for Sweetheart of the West.

And again:

Yes, the McCain-Palin ticket is weak on the major realities. But it is strong on the symbolic dimension of politics that Republicans are so good at marketing. Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored. The initial Democratic response to Palin — the response based on realities alone — indicates that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush years.

Obama is at long last moving Democrat tanks onto Republican turf by addressing the cognitive dimension of policy. 

Obama is right when he says that America is based on people caring about each other and working together for a better future-empathy, responsibility (both personal and social), and aspiration. These lead to a concept of government based on protection (environmental, consumer, worker, health care, and retirement protection) and empowerment (through infrastructure, public education, the banking system, the stock market, and the courts). Nobody can achieve the American Dream or live an American lifestyle without protection and empowerment by the government.

As a UK-based Lib Dem, this is a framing that very much appeals to me. So what lesson should we draw from this?

Surely, it is that evolving a coherent overarching narrative that operates on voters’ minds at the cognitive level is the beginning of political wisdom.  Yet this is something the Lib Dem establishment has never managed to do; they remain wedded to a policy shopping list approach which supposes that merely having the ‘best’ policies on each and every topic is enough (although the reality is that Lib Dem policies are often far from the ‘best’).  Two or three years ago I heard Chris Rennard espouse precisely this view – identify voters top concerns (typically a very short list including health, education, economy etc) then devise and push policies that focus on these, nothing else really matters. 

Obviously specific policies are needed, but they must fit comfortably into a cognitive framework and must be credible in their own right as each will in turn come under scrutiny from subject specialists.   And, if policies fit into an overarching framework then, almost by definition, they will be ‘joined up’ – justified by their contribution to the whole rather then simply because they look good in isolation.   This would revolutionize Lib Dem thinking. 

This is, of course, not as easy as it sounds.  On the other hand, it is a lot easier if you’re actually trying.