STATECRAFT

This episode is a panel discussion about diversity in Whitehall. Both the diversity of civil service jobs and of civil service people.

It is one of our regular special  episodes of the podcast with a panel of experts discussing developments in the Civil Service.

This month the discussions is chaired by Jess Bowie, Co-Editor of Civil Service World.
She is talking to Sonia Kahn who was SPAD (Special Adviser) and a civil servant. An Philip Rycroft who was previously a Permanent Secretary.

Unfortunately due to a personal issue I had to duck out of this discussion at the last moment. Jess was already going to chair anyway, so she valiantly took over and ran this session, brilliantly I might add. ENJOY.

Simon Kuper's new book examines the small group of mainly Eton, and definitely mostly Oxford, Tories took over the UK.

Simon's book delves into the combination of public school, Oxford and especially the Oxford Union shaped this group and how they found their cause - Brexit. Which was, for them, about their right to rule.

Simon's book is published by Profile Books (2022) and is a fascinating read.

This is the first of a regular monthly "WHITEHALL WATCHING" sessions.

The team for this episode is Sonia Khan (former civil servant and special adviser); Philip Rycroft (former Permanent Secretary); and Suzannah Brecknell (Editor of Civil Service World).

In this episode we discuss the roles of Ministers, Civil Servants, SPADS and experts. Including reflections from Sonia and Philip on their experiences.

And of course the announcement that the Government intends to cut 91,000 civil service jobs - 1 in 5 and back to 2016 levels.

Universities were hardly mentioned in the Levelling Up white paper published by the government earlier this year.

Jonathan Grant and Andy Westwood addressed this gap in a paper they wrote for the Bennet Institute at Cambridge University.

I talked to them about their concerns and ideas.

Jonathan also published a book last year (2021) about the role of Universities: The New Power University. Pearson. 

A lot of political commentary in the media assumes a certain basic knowledge of what's happening in elections. Sometimes I wonder if the media folk know themselves?

Anyway, here is my simple, 5 minute, explainer of what the elections are. Let me know if you think its been useful.

George Arbuthnott and his colleague Jonathan Calvert, both of the The Sunday Times 'Insight Team', have written one of the most detailed accounts of the Coronavirus pandemic in the UK: FAILURES OF STATE (Mudlark press).

In this discussion George details some of the terrible mistakes made by the Johnson Government over the past two years, which led to the worst death toll and the worst economic consequences of any country in Europe.

Some of the results of their investigations are truly shocking. So it is worth listening to the whole of this slightly longer episode of RED TEAM. But you might need a stiff drink to hand.

(And sorry about the odd bark on the sound track - that was my dog Rory trying to get in on the act.)

Adult social care has gone through several transformations since 1945. Bob Hudson's book CLIENTS, CONSUMERS OR CITIZENS (2021, Policy Press) analyses the last 40 years of the privatisation of adult social care provision.

Before the turn to markets in the 1980s, provision had for a brief period been more like other welfare state services, but soon bagged to change under the Thatcher government.

Bob, who is now retired and a Visiting Professor in Public Policy at the University of Kent, was there throughout the momentous changes. His thoughtful and accessible book is well worth reading. Here's our discussion.

To say the House of Commons is in something of a crisis would be an understatement. Dozen's of MPs accused of misbehaving, the Prime Minister being investigated for lying to the House and one MP even accused of watching porn in the Commons Chamber.

Dr Hannah White's new book couldn't be more timely. So I talked to her about it. This episode is a little longer, but worth it.

Hannah is Deputy Director of the Institute of Government. Before that she ran the Committee on Standards in Public Life and before that she was a Clark in Parliament. So she is extremely well placed to offer this penetrating analysis of what's wrong, and how to fix it.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly threatened to "privatise the arse off" the Passport Agency recently for delivery failures at a Cabinet meeting on 26 April 2022.

Which is somewhat ironic as many of the Passport Agency's functions are already outsourced to private providers.

This is a reminder that debates are often driven more by ideology than pragmatic analysis of the facts. 1in 1987 Prof Barry Bozeman published a fascinating book entitled "All Organizations Are Public" which examined the complexities of organisational status. I am talked to him one eve of his retirement for RED TEAM.

Prof Pippa Catterall of University of Westminster talks to Colin Talbot about Partygate's wider context. 

Read her LSE blog here: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/why-partygate-matters/