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item0043C 734, 735
734
16 June 2003
Milburn: Ambition Burnout
Why did Milburn go? He suffered
ambition burnout - that's my view. As young
career
politicians reach the top of the pole earlier and earlier, and as families
are formed later and later, we are witnessing a new and problematical motivational cocktail -
the side-effects of which blew Milburn away. For the good of our
political order, we must try to understand more about the
dangerous profession of politics.
Complex factors are at work.
First, curiosity has always been a great driver of ambition. The simple
desire to climb every ladder, breast every hill, win every election - just to see what is on the
other side. The desire to "get to the Boardroom", to the Cabinet Room, to
the Officers Mess, to occupy the Head Teachers study, to command the Police
Force - the delight of a successful personal journey - that has always fed
ambition.
- The younger members of the salariat,
these days, having started their professional careers at 25, have reached
high office by the age of 40 - think of the current crop of young Blairite
Ministers. David Milliband is only38, and already with senior
ministerial office. And in politics, unlike the other professions,
it is virtually impossible to "move on". You are destined to
desultory loitering around the corridors of power. IOf your curiosity is
satisfied early on in life, where do your aspirations lie?
Second, late parenthood.
The birth in Downing Street of .. Blair symbolised this change, but the
evidence is all around. And we have no reason to doubt the conflicts
of loyalty and emotion posed by such changes, which Alan Milburn prayed in
aid when he resigned. Professionalism encourages the young
salariat to postpone family-formation, while they devote they
energies to getting a firm grip on the slippery pole. In Alan
Milburn's case, there were clearly special family dynamics at work: now 45,
he is the only child of a single-mother, and he must therefore be peculiarly
aware of a father's family role - while still remaining unmarried to his
partner Dr Ruth Briel, perhaps (like others from disrupted families of
origin) rejecting the formal commitment of marriage. The conflicts of
loyalty must been particularly difficult for him to bear.
Yet there is at work, I believe, a third factor. It is
pragmatisation of politics. In
spite of all the rhetoric, is clear that political office has become a
joyless experience - Government is no longer about
Doing Great Deeds, Fighting Great Fights, Realising Great Ideals.
Labour politics, certainly, is no longer a
crusade. It is about improving exam results, cutting
waiting-times for hip-replacements, building roads, running the trains and
the buses on time without accidents, increasing air-terminal capacity,
fighting Nimbyism - what sort of inspiring crusade is that? Alan
Milburn had been a wannabee politician since leaving Lancaster University in
1984, first organising trade union studies and then working as Economic
Development Officer for North Tyneside Council:his journey brought him to
the Commons in 1992, at the age of 34. He then rose very rapidly to
very high office. But the crusading joy of Aneurin Bevan has clearly
evaporated, from such high office - in spite of the ubiquitous bedpan quote.
The result was that when a crunch conflict of loyalty arose for Milburn,
what was there to keep him at the head of the crusading column?
If we are not on a crusade after all, why bother?
- The paradox is that it is the professional
salariat that has, as a matter of professional
self-interest, taken the idealism out of politics. For the truth is
that if you want a reliable well-paid political career, you keep off the
ideals - because they can never be realised! There is among the
salariat an unspoken collective
sense that pragmatism is better for the bank balance - just as company
directors instinctively protect the magic secrecy of the Boardroom, which
is the Golden Key to all their profitable chicanery. Far better, for
ones political career, to pitch targets low, and to claim to have achieved
them - and therefore to justify lucrative re-election...
So keep off the ideals, Tony, for goodness'
sake...
Alan Milburn has already been very successful, albeit in a field with
relatively little able competition. There were certain whispers about the
limits of his ability: his civil servants regard him as a bully - and
bullies are usually compensating from some inadequacy or other. Faced
with the intimidating NHS, he might even have had some self-doubt of the
Estelle Morris kind.
- But when the real motivational crunch came,
there was no inspiration, no ambition left in the tank, to keep him at his
Ministerial desk. That's Ambition Burnout.
Do you
agree with that analysis? What do you think?
Drop me a line
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735
16 June 2003
Locus Pocus
 I visited 10 Downing Street this week, for
the first time in my life. And I climbed the famous staircase of past
Prime Ministers. The occasion was the launch of a new
communitarian Fabian leaflet,
Communities in Control,
by a rising Blairite Minister Hazel Blears.
The PM was in France, patching up relations with Jacques Chirac, so our host for the
evening was David Blunkett, on his way to his
lecture outlining plans for elected local Police Boards. There is no doubt
that Government Ministers would like to make "localism" (in health, in
policing, in education, in childcare, in care for the elderly) the
distinctive theme of Labour's Third Term. David Blunkett said just that,
last Wednesday. His words were picked up
by the perceptive Guardian.
But I have a problem .
And it's not just with Tony Blair. It with the entire institution of
the powerful and ruthless
salariat
that has taken command of national politics, in all Parties. For a
variety of reasons, they have ditched the politics of idealism (
see my Milburn
analysis), and re-drawn the political battle-ground in terms of
morale-sapping practicalities, a desert of pragmatism devoid of
inspirational momentum. It follows, as night follows day, that I am
coming to distrust their motives - even though I am close to them all, in
my personal aspirations and perceptions. It is a deeply unpleasant
entanglement.
And I see profound ambiguity of motive, in
the cultivation of the "new localism".
What is really behind it?
A. Are they bent
on by-passing conventional Local Authorities?
The decline of UK local government, and the
rise of "provincial government", is proceeding apace. And I
sympathise with the exasperation which many Westminster MPs and
provincial Assembly Members clearly feel, with the shortcomings of local
Councils. I share that exasperation. As institutions, local Councils are clearly running out of
steam, and reform is needed. I have no doubt of the truth of that
proposition. Labour's Local Government Act 2000
(elected Mayors, Cabinet Members) shows no signed of generating any
significant improvement. Equally, it would be extremely difficult
and disruptive to carry out another round of wholesale "local government
reorganisation". An alternative approach is to "grow" new elective
institutions, all weaker and more diverse than the major Councils of the
past, to which "service delivery" could be delegated without threatening
central of provincial democratic mandates (i.e. legitimacy, authority and personal
income-potential). With more
numerous and weaker local agencies there would less prospect of any
effective challenge to the political salariat.
B. Are they
fighting turf wars, within the salariat?
This is a cynical variant of the first
strategy. The 2000 Act has given risen to the creation of new
2,500-strong political salariat
at local level, paid Councillors all, dramatically enlarging the salary-pool accessible
to professional politicians - and I suspect that the members of the elite
salariat (MPs and Provincial Assembly members in
Scotland, Wales, London, Northern Ireland) do not like the
competition. They would prefer (while extending salaried provincial
government) to hand over local power to
amateurs and volunteers, each group of part-timers
cultivating strictly local institutions. They would therefore threaten the
legitimacy of noone.
C. Are they
genuinely committed to a new era of participatory democracy, coupled the
enrichment of representative democracy?
This is what I would like
their motive to be. I believe that the day of the Council
"mini-state", the multifunctional elective Council, is indeed over, and that
elected provincial politicians (the salariat) should take over city regional governance
as well as provincial. Our city regions should be run by
professional, full-time politicans - by the same cadre that staff the
Welsh National Assembly.
And at local community level, the governance
of our society should indeed by assigned to "volunteers", to the
exclusion of the salariat -
with new single-purpose, elective institutions taking responsibility for
hospitals, schools, local policing, town-and-country planning, arts and
leisure provision. That would bring tens of thousands of our
fellow-citizens into public life, in roles of their own choosing and on
manageable terms. I want to see a new and coherent line drawn
between the responsibilities of the salariat
and those of the active citizenry.
You can see my
problem. While I want to support localisation for "C
Reasons", I fear that Government Ministers are really deploying A & B-type
reasoning. And my trust in the salariat
is in any event on the wane...
What do you think? Where do you
stand, on the New Localism? Drop me a line
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