The excellent book "The Blunders Of Our Governments" goes into great depth at how governments get things wrong, often with catastrophic results. The scale of the catastrophe just depends on the scale of the blunder.
One of the biggest (and most famous) "blunders" by any UK government in modern times was the Poll Tax. Looking at the sheer incompetence of how the government is managing its Brexit strategy, it's hard not to to draw parallels with how the Thatcher government blundered into a crisis entirely of its own making, and the current one. Some of the time scale over the issues - how it was a "slow burner" that gradually gained more and more inescapable momentum - also matches. To see how well the events of thirty years ago and today mirror each other, we'll have a look at the basics of what went wrong with the Poll Tax.
The idea of the Poll tax had its formation in the 1970s, thanks to think tanks that looked at "outside-of-the-box" solutions (mirroring what we see today with the government's Brexit strategy). The idea was one of a number of options at reforming "the rates", where council tax was paid only by those who owned property in the area. By early 1985, after the government had began its privatisation agenda, it looked in more detail at reforming local government and the system of "the rates", to make it equitable, so that everyone paid what was fair. In a famous meeting at Chequers, the Poll Tax was one of a few options put to the government, but by a series of interactions, some high-placed people in government saw the Poll Tax as the only true way to fully reform the system; all the other options seemed either unfair or meaningless half-measures. After a period of time, further discussions and discreet lobbying (also - looking at the practicality of the idea - from some in the civil service), it was in the end agreed that the only way for it to work was for a "big bang" implementation. In other words, having some kind of "transitional" arrangement was pointless and administratively confusing; much better to go straight from one system to the next, and iron out any potential glitches along the way. Those in government against all this (and there were a number of them) were silenced by the momentum that gradually built in favour of this radical reform; they were also quick to make their opposition well-known to others in government, to avoid any guilt by association.
Thus the Poll Tax was introduced through a combination of groupthink in government, as well as cultural disconnect. The problems (and the riots) are well-known. It now clear that the selfsame mistakes have took place with Brexit thirty years later, but now on a scale (and potential impact) many times greater.
Like with the Poll Tax, Brexit was a "slow-burner". Initially it was an issue with a small faction of the Conservative Party, some media hacks, editors and the like. But all these people had influence (and with that, gravitas) as well as money to back them up. Like with the Poll Tax, Brexit became an issue thanks to political events: where the Poll Tax came to be seen by Thatcher as a way to reform troublesome local councils, Brexit (or, at least, the initial offer of a referendum) came to be seen as way by Cameron to silence the hard-right in the party that were more ideological kin to UKIP. It took around five years (from the Chequers meeting in 1985 to it being implemented in 1990) for the Poll Tax to fully burst into life, warts and all. Brexit - if we call March 2019 its "implementation" - will have come to exist in the public sphere for a similar period, when the EU referendum was first promised by Cameron in early 2013. Like how the Poll Tax was ambushed on the rest of government, who were then hostages to its fate, Brexit made the same of Cameron, when the referendum made Brexit a reality. His successor, Theresa May, was then even more beholden to the hard-right ideologues in the party, even though she was not a fervent believer in the idea herself. As mentioned earlier with the Poll Tax, it was the desire for a "big bang", as well as the desire to make a radical reform, that led to the chaos of its implementation; the desire among some in government for a "Hard Brexit" without a transitional arrangement follows the same blinkered thinking that dismisses compromises such as staying in the EEA or EFTA as a "betrayal" of the cause. This stubbornness leaves the potential for heaven knows what kind of chaos to the UK economy come March 2019.
Once May succeeded Cameron as Prime Minister, Brexit took on a whole life of its own, like the Poll Tax did with the Thatcher government thirty years ago. Those who opposed the Poll Tax were seen as "wets" or lacking the boldness necessary for real reform; those now opposed to "Hard Brexit" are these days seen as "Remoaners" or saboteurs who are trying to undermine the government. This is the result of groupthink and cultural disconnect, as well as a deferential respect for those in authority, assuming that they must know what they are talking about . If anything, these issues are far worse this time around, given how high the stakes are. With the Poll Tax, those affected could (and many did) ignore their threatening letters from councils, which resulted in an eventual (partial) climb-down from the government; by contrast, the economy of the entire country is at stake thanks to the current "blunder", and the only way to escape it would be to flee abroad.
The Thatcher government had almost a "revolutionary" aura about it at times. Cameron's and May's government have been in some ways even more radical, and not in a good way. The desire for "reform" among the hard-right in government led to various ministers leading their departments as their own pet project. In a sense, Cameron's relaxed attitude to ministers pursuing their own agendas also led to scandal and scandal: the direct result of having an "experimental" government agenda.
This is what marks out the Conservative government of today as being different from earlier incarnations: whereas earlier governments took risks from time to time, the current government seem to actively encourage them. If you are not a risk-taker, it seems, then you lack the drive and radicalism necessary for the government's wider agenda. This kind of callous recklessness and shallow disregard for the wider consequences is unprecedented in any British government of modern times: it's almost as if they want things to fail. While some of it is down to the glaring incompetence of ministers, some of it can only be driven by the agenda of an amoral, manipulative few.
Thatcher's Poll Tax ultimately was a sign of the government losing the plot; it was only a change of Prime Minister, and a little luck, that allowed the Conservatives to stay in power for seven more years from its initial implementation disaster. A "Hard Brexit" would be a disaster on a scale a thousand times more disruptive; who knows what the political ramifications of that would be?
No comments:
Post a Comment