I admit that after a week in which I wrote at least 25,000 words, I feel like a Saturday off. However, yesterday long-term commentator on this blog, Ivan Horrocks, posted a comment in response to my post on Keir Starmer's new ‘mission-based' approach to Labour campaigning that I thought worth sharing, and which coincidentally gave me the great I want for today.
This is Ivan's analysis of what he thinks Starmer is going, which seems spot-on to me:
Reading reports of Starmer's speech and reading the document Labour released in which they set out Starmer's ‘missions' I was reminded of some material I wrote for an OU Masters course on strategy back in 2016.
One of the approaches to strategy I discussed was ‘template based strategy', which I noted at the time, had become the most popular approach to strategy/strategic management by then (at the time there were over 76 million ‘hits' on Google). The approach was the result of the merging of strategic management and vision-led leadership, which led, in turn, to the emergence of what I referred to as an ‘industry' producing template-based or styled systems of strategy/strategic planning, not least because it was ‘a money-spinner for a significantly sized army of consultants and experts (including academics).'
A typical template designed for a variety of entities consisted of the following:
The Vision: a unique vision of what the organisation/nation will be like in the future.
The Mission: a high-sounding politically correct statement of the purpose of the organisation/nation.
The Values: a statement describing the organisation/nations values. Make sure they are noncontroversial.
The Strategies: describe some aspirations/goals but call them strategies.
Later in the module I drew on the work of Richard Rumelt (‘Good Strategy, Bad Strategy', 2011) who noted that, ‘To detect a bad strategy, look for one of more of four major hallmarks:
Fluff. A form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments. It uses “Sunday” words (words that are inflated and unnecessarily abstruse) and apparently esoteric concepts to create the illusion of high-level thinking.
Failure to face the challenge. Bad strategy fails to recognise or define the challenge. When you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy to improve it.
Mistaking goals for strategy. Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles.
Bad strategic objectives. A strategic objective is set by a leader as a means to an end. Strategic objectives are “bad” when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable.' (Rumelt, 2011:32).
It struck me that there are quite a number of similarities between Starmer's ‘visions' and Labour's current attempts at strategic thinking, and template-based and ‘bad strategy'. Maybe some of the members of the ‘industry' of consultants and experts that I noted existed at the time are now members of Starmer's advisory team.
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After the fiasco of Truss and the overwhelming, enthusiastic support her policies received from Tory members, Tory newspapers and Tory “Think-tanks” we now have Starmer in the territory of a quote, I hope I have remembered correctly, from JK Galbraith.
“Whenever I hear a businessman talking about policies as being common sense, they are usually repeating the ideas of some long discredited economist”
Whilst I understand the frustration that can come from the Labour leadership’s political posturing prior to the full-on fight for success in the next election, but do you really expect detailed policies at this stage of the game? You know full-well that we have a bitterly divided country and a dominant right wing popular media that will take advantage of any opportunity to influence an easily led electorate many of which still hanker for the return of Johnson and believe that Brexit was not so bad. The situation is febrile and needs to be handled carefully – Labour need to keep the ball in the air for the next 12 months or so even if it sometimes comes across as hand-wavy. By any measure they are doing a reasonable job of doing this. The comments by Ivan Horrocks are trite. The motivations and actions of industrial players in playing the strategy game are typically quite different from a Labour party that is trying to achieve a tricky act of balance.
Yes
It’s not enough to not be the Tories
Politics is about dreams and fulfilling them
Don’t you realise that?
I think that getting rid of thousands of members of the labour party because they don’t agree with you is not the way forward for the party.
It’s particularly wrong when you disagree with their NHS privatisation stance. Both Starmer and Streeting have been funded by US health insurance companies.
The labour party will soon be bankrupt if Starmer and Evans continue getting rid of members.
As a teacher we teach pupils to be inclusive and accepting. The tabloids, for want of a better expression, completely fuck that up. So it is particularly painful that the Labour Party has decided to also be non-inclusive and exclusionary. If I didn’t know better, I’d suggest “The influence of intelligence services on the British left” (1996) https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/the-influence-of-intelligence-services-on-the-british-left/ (disclosure: I’m webmaster the site).
However, I’m heartened by the views of the RMT Union’s Mick Lynch “incredible speech about Keir Starmer”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQPlX195em4&t=253s who is clearly not happy with Starmer, but would urge everyone to vote for him.
Lynch is a pragmatist
I wonder for how long that will last?
Perhaps that’s the idea.
RMT is affilited to both the labour party and Health Campaigns Together. If Lynch told people not to vote labour the union could be kicked out of labour.
The problem with Starmer is that he’s a “satisfied man”. He can’t empathise; there’s no “fire in his belly”. That’s the problem that becomes ours with him as leader for the country.
As a strategy to win an election the speech “did the trick”. From the (limited) media I read it was pretty well received and will maintain/increase Labour’s lead in the opinion polls. In many ways this looks rather like 1996 with Blair and Brown promising Tory-like spending controls and picking fights with the left of the party.
The fear is, of course that 2024 is not 1997 but 1992…. and that brings older party members like me out in a cold sweat.
So, should Labour….
(1) embrace a more radical manifesto now on the basis that “they can’t lose”?
(2) keep with the current election strategy and then become more radical once in power (and take the fury of the media as a result)?
(3) recognise that solving our problems is a 2 or 3 parliament job (after all, training doctors, for example, is a 10 year programme) and move more slowly towards the programme we need.
(4) stay managerial and be Tory-lite
In 1996 I wanted (1) and in its absence I wanted (2) after 1997. I think we got ” (3) with a bit of (4)” and the improvements in public services were significant.
Today I am not so sure what I want….. my heart says (1) but it won’t happen. (2) would be OK…. even (3). My fear is (4).
The problem is 4 is the plan
Possibly…. but I don’t think we know that. And we can’t really know it until about 2026.
Ivan has actually described much of the strategic thinking I have seen in the public sector of late.
Let’s look at the long held view that the public sector should call its users ‘customers’ as part of a customer service strategy.
In my field – social housing – there is no such thing as a customer, as I believe is also the case in benefits offices and other services.
A customer is someone who has the agency to execute choice to go somewhere else if they do not like the service we give. If Tesco upsets you, complain or go to Sainsburys or M&S dependent upon how deep your pockets are (Aldi even). Users of social housing and other public sector services have no such agency.
Yet people on our housing list have no option to take the more heavily subsidised housing the council has to offer. Added to that, turnover in our service has stopped. If people can get out of social housing, believe you me they do but this last two years flows out of our stock have ground to a standstill, so the housing list grows longer and B&B bills climb up for local authorities.
So, all these years we’ve been telling our users that they are customers and they should expect this and that.
Well, what do you think the ‘strategy’ is now?
The strategy of my ‘org is to say to that the service users WE have insisted on calling and conditioning as customers expect too much of the service as budget cuts bite deeper and problems grow ever longer and bigger!! So now the strategy is to deliver less!
It’s their fault apparently – for being like ‘customers’.
I know that the idea that the Audit Commission inspection regime (remember that folks?) was a sort of ‘proxy market’ – pretending to create competition – a market phenomenon BTW, not a public service one nor appropriate either – but it was just used as a smoke screen to hide the gradual decline in financing housing services. The competition element through the Audit Commission was used to sweat budgets instead.
Again, it all points to a withdrawal by the state in its obligations to its citizens.
The answer to this is simple: print the bloody money into these services so that services improve because these people are not really customers – they are dependents of the state (and we all are at some point in our lives).
Look at housing development – my field. We have to charge 80% market rents – not the old lower ‘social rent’ – in order to subsidise our own new build housing because the Government underfunds new housing. These 80% rents were brought in under New Labour but were I think a Tory policy – ha!
So what happens is, is that the housing benefit bill goes up – the money is going into consumption subsidies and not supply subsidies – yeah? And then what happens? Well, the MPs start bitching about the cost of the benefit bill because they simply won’t put enough money into supply side so they start tinkering and come up with ‘Universal Credit’ which is still reducing the housing consumption subsidies.
And BTW, if you apply for affordable housing grant , you’re expected to offer up you social rented stock as conversions to 80% market rent so that your rents support more of your development – not government money.
So, hopefully you can just see how fucked up it all is. But it is not like this because of stupidity; it is being done on purpose to create disharmony and false crisis – manufacturing consent like Chomsky tells us – it is the state still rolling back and leaving society exposed.
I don’t see any politicians talking about this issue at all. They know what they are doing and they are not pulling the wool over my eyes.
Thanks.
I cannot think of a single change in the last 15 years that has made it easier for private landlords to legally provide low cost housing, and can think of quite a few that have made it harder.
Why is private landlord provision preferred?
Over what?
I don’t understand your question or even your inference, sorry.
Social housing
James Twining
What needs to be understood is that there is no obligation for private citizens to rent their homes out.
Local authorities have a legal duty however to house households found to be homeless and allocate these duties to their own stock, private rented and B&B. The problem as I said above is supply.
In my area, there has been a mass withdrawal of private rented rent provision as landlords have been selling up post Covid/BREXIT despite the fact that there are no rent controls (or the housing benefit rules act as a brake on rents to some extent). So people in the PRS are being made homeless. We’ve also have had a huge influx of southerners on median wages selling their homes in London and the south coast seeking lower living costs and buying to live here in the Midlands and commute back down South or find jobs locally.
So the PRS (private rented sector) is not really a secure form of tenancy for households like council housing where the tenancy can be for life in most cases (although housing associations tend to use the oxymoronically named assured-shorthold tenancies from the private sector which are easier to end).
In short Mr Twining, the PRS cannot be relied upon to house those who cannot afford to own their own home and need to rent because its supply fluctuates with the economy too much.
That is why we need more council housing. But this government doesn’t care. For all landlords it is reducing the housing portion of rent in universal credit for tenants who have to decide between eating/heating/accommodation and leaves all landlords to tidy up the mess (evictions, rent arrears etc) whilst at the same time stymying the building of new homes in the social sector.
Finally there is also a huge problem growing in this country concerning the condition of the nation’s housing stock which because of a lack of investment is declining 20 years after New Labours Decent Homes initiative in the early 2000’s that affects rented and owned properties alike. You might remember the mould problem in Rochdale which was social housing but it’s just as bad in the private rented sector and rogue landlords are more common in that sector.
Government has made money available to ‘de-carbonise’ existing housing stock in the social sector, but the sums on offer are paltry with the landlord expected to carry out that work AND develop new housing whilst at the same time Government is now only letting councils put up their rents BELOW current rates of inflation as they are still reeling from meeting the cost of Covid. So the income to invest is reduced. Income has already been reduced because the government has made it easier for tenants to buy their new homes since 2010 with hundreds of thousand of state homes becoming privately owned.
Bearing in mind now that the housing revenue accounts (HRA) of most councils are now self-funding and under the sole management of local authorities, you can only conclude that this is a deliberate plan to make LAs run out of money in their HRAs so that they have to sell off their council housing stock to raise funds to run a housing service at all.
To describe housing policy as a morass of contradictions at the moment would be an understatement.
But the trajectory is clear unless a different government (a VERY different) gets into power soon.
Thanks for that and your passion on this issue
Thank you PSR for your efforts.
But I think you and Richard have misinterpreted a simple point.
I have expressed no preference for private over charitable housing associations or councils.
Cappuccino economists should want all modes of provision to be allowed to flourish.
Why not stop talking in riddles?
The latest offering from Labour is an example of what Harry Frankfurt identified in his 1986 essay “On Bullshit”. Frankfurt maintained that the habitual bullshitter is more dangerous than the habitual liar. The liar knows what the truth is and tries to deceive. The bullshitter, on the other hand, may be blissfully unaware of whether his/her utterances are true or false or even make any coherent sense.
Indeed
Thanks for featuring my comment, Richard. In a spirit of balance I thought it worth adding a few words on what I’d argue constitutes ‘good’ strategy.
But first, let me pick up on a point which I think is implicit in Clive Parry’s comment. None of us who have an interest in politics can be unaware of the fact that an opposition party that ‘shows its hand’, as it were (i.e. provides too much detail of what its priorities and potential policies might be), when there are still many months to an election would be both irresponsible and mad. This would be the case in a environment where the media is ‘balanced’, but given the situation we have in the UK, where the majority of the media is Tory supporting, and solidly right of centre (at the very least) this would simply be inviting failure. Consequently, it’s entirely understandable why limiting or managing discussion and media attention to high level ‘missions’ and/or ‘values’ and/or ‘goals’ is a preferred approach at this stage in the electoral cycle.
However, as I once pointed out to my postgrad students back in my OU days (and indeed, as many of them knew from their own experience) often strategy making/strategic thinking never gets past this phase. Or, to draw on Rumelt once again:
‘Despite the roar of voices wanting to equate strategy top ambition, leadership, “vision”, planning or the economic logic of competition, strategy is none of these. The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with these factors.’ (Rumelt, 2011: 2).
The second sentence in the quote is the essence of ‘good’ (i.e. an effective) approach to strategy, of course. There’s much more detail on the various steps that need to be taken to deliver such an approach, not the least being identifying what the critical factors that need to be addressed in any situation are. And make no mistake, anyone whose worked in or has knowledge of public policy will appreciate these are often complex, interrelated and, to make matters worse, frequently highly dynamic (e.g. the problems facing the NHS).
Furthermore, one of the hallmarks of public policy is not simply identifying the critical factors that a strategy needs to address, but agreeing on what they are. And in a highly polarised political environment, where ideology and dogma now play a dominant role, it’s possible that it will never be possible to come up with strategy/policy that effectively tackles the problems of our time.
But anyway, I digress. Returning to Starmer and the Labour party, my worry is that in their effort to keep on the right (and politically right) side of the Tory supporting media, and the Murdoch press in particular, they never move beyond the features of ‘bad’ strategy, and/or the form of strategy outlined in the first sentence of the Rumelt quote, above. Consequently, as and when (if?) they win the next election they enter office clear on the ‘missions’ but with little idea about how to deliver. The result will be wasted years in office – much as happened in 1997 due to Blair’s and Brown’s decision to stick to Tory spending rules.
That said, and to conclude on a more positive note, Starmer’s also spoke about increasing and improving coordination between government departments and other entities. Unless I’m mistaken (and I don’t think I am) this is yet another idea taken from the Blair years – except then it was known by its much snappier term – ‘joined-up government’. I realise there’s a significant body of feeling that we should steer clear of anything ‘Blairite’. But in large part, much of the evidence from the period 1997 – 2010 showed that ‘joined-up government’ was one strategy/policy that worked. So, lets hope that by the time of the next election Starmer and his advisors’ approach to strategy is as effective and ends up as ‘good’.
Thanks Ivan
Where does the NHS come in your idea of a good strategy?
Both Blair and Starmer want it privatised.
The NHS is already partly privatised and is demonstrably a failure. Tory Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes have cost us £250 billion, which would have paid the £28 billion public sector wage rises for years to come. Ref: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8279974/Private-Finance-Initiative-hospitals-will-bring-taxpayers-60-years-of-pain.html
https://fullfact.org/economy/maria-caulfield-nhs-nurse-pay/
Read: How to Dismantle the NHS in 10 Easy Steps by Dr Youssef El-Gingihy
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-Easy-Steps-second/dp/1789041783/
Watch: The Great NHS Heist https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thegreatnhsheist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro-oU0u8Jos
Thanks
This describes current university approach to strategic thinking perfectly.
Just a point of correction to Jenw.
RMT is not affiliated to Labour. Here in Dover it is one of the most active unions defending its workers. It does not negotiate the compromises needed to accommodate the now-“centrist” and increasingly irrelevant (locally) CLP. We used to work very well in an informal capacity, before the purge last year, but there was never any cosying up.
Mick Lynch is free to say what he likes about Labour. Of course he’s being pragmatic. Personally, I’m coming round to doubting whether I will vote Labour, but the truth is that there are only 3 possible outcomes of the next election. 1. Tory gov. 2. Labour gov. 3. Labour minority gov propped up by LibDems and Greens – with PR forced on Starmer.
Sorry, I got that wrong. They are affiliated to the Labour Representation Committee. I wonder if that is going to be proscribed by Starmer next. Just had their AGM where Corbyn spoke.
RMT & Labour In 2003 some Scottish branches of the RMT voted to donate some of their funds to the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) in protest against the policies of Tony Blair and New Labour, such as not renationalising the railways.[8] This led the Labour Party to expel the union in early 2004 for breaching its rules.[8]
The RMT announced in 2009 that it would be standing a slate of candidates in the 2009 European Parliament elections under the banner of No to EU – Yes to Democracy, a broad left-wing alter-globalisation coalition which aims to offer an alternative to the “anti-foreigner” and pro-business policies of the UK Independence Party.[9] The RMT then became a founding member of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), a left wing political party which has contested the 2010 and 2015 general elections.
Apparently these ‘missions’ are part of Starmer’s strategy to get money from rich people rather than trying to increase individual party membership or raise money from unions.
Depressingly it seems to be working – Lord Sainsbury’s £2m
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/25/lord-sainsbury-returns-to-the-labour-fold-with-2m-donation
The depressing situation everyone on here is wrestling with is pretending that Starmer and Co are actually a reformist party (even one close to Blair/Brown) when all the evidence away from the ‘mission statements’ is that he and his second-rate shadow cabinet are either bought and paid-for or Tory-lite.
It’s all a bit “Don’t Look Up”.