Pat McFadden, in his role as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and chief Starmer fixer, said on Radio 4 yesterday that he wanted the government to behave as if it is a start-up company. His explanation was that it should not be looking for solutions in the long term but for answers by next Friday.
To be precise, he said in a speech delivered later in the morning:
In the digital age, you don't have to work out precisely what you need to build at the start, and then start building it.
You can start with something small and try it out. Test it on people. Fix the problems. Change the design. Test it again. Throw it away and start again cheaply, if it doesn't work. Tweak it again. And so on, and on, for as long as you provide the service.
Suddenly the most important question isn't ‘How do we get this right the first time?' It's ‘How do we make this better by next Friday?'
I have read the whole speech, and nothing takes away from the fact that this is was the message that he was seeking to deliver.
I have struggled to come to terms with his suggestion without having to come to the conclusion that he is either stupid or completely unaware of what start-up companies do, and I cannot help but suggest, having done so, that both my observations are true.
I have created and then managed more than my fair share of start-up companies. Not one of them sought solutions to any problem by the following Friday, although, on occasion, they might have been desperate for payment to them to have been made by that day. Instead, every single one of them had a long-term vision of what they were trying to achieve, and without exception a plan that showed how delivery would necessarily take place over time if goals were to be achieved.
It was, of course, always true that each of these start-up's plans required adaptation in the light of experience. Being nimble of foot, which most small companies are, permitted that to happen. But this is not something that any of them sought to maintain. Startup companies, rather than one-person operations, always expect to grow to the point where consultations on the process of change, both internally and externally, are necessary, with the goal being to take staff, suppliers and customers with them on that journey. To pretend that imposition is something that can survive long into the life of such an entity is absurd, at least if you value your staff and their goodwill.
McFadden‘s comments were, therefore, utterly inappropriate, as was much of his speech yesterday morning. They show as much comprehension of the required actions from the government as Starmer did last week when throwing down a gauntlet to the civil service. But, most particularly, what they demonstrate is that McFadden thinks that government should be run on the basis of panic, reaction and U-turns rather than on the basis of developing a plan that people can understand and then work to achieve.
I have said, time and again that Labour lacks a narrative to explain why it is in government, and all McFadden succeeded in doing was to confirm that fact.
Worse, though, he tried to make a virtue out of his incompetence, and that is quite extraordinary because absolutely no one is going to be convinced that he, or Keir Starmer, or the government of which they are a part, knows what it is doing on the basis of what McFadden said.
Yet again, Labour has failed to reboot. How many times can they do that and survive with Starmer in charge?
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This is not governing.
This is managing – managing a divestment.
Not only that, it is redolent of how the Neo-libs confuse macro concepts with micro concepts.
It’s complete bollix.
He’s suggesting that all a government can ever do is react. He is abdicating responsibility in my view. It must be because he feels that the market rules. Deeply entwined in his words are the words ‘Nothing to do with me Guv’ and ‘Don’t look to us’.
Reboot? Labour never ever got dressed to go to work to rule, never mind putting its boots on.
Did those who voted for Labour vote for this?
Is this the end of government? We employ people to – – what? – shake their heads and tell us there is nothing they can do?
Since when?
McFadden likes to portray himself as some cuddly uncle , the man who didn’t do anything about his tenure during the Post Office IT scandal
Saw and heard nothing
He obviously doesn’t know how many start-ups go bust.
Very good point
Richard, the sooner we get rid of Starmer/Reeves the better. However, I hope we get better, such as someone like Angela Rayner rather than Wes Streeting. Labour needs to start acting like a labour government, for the sake of all of us.
Actually, Labour (or Faux-Labour/Nu-Nu-Labour/Hostage Party/Likud-Labour, as I call SKS and his collection of Keystone Kops 4th-raters) needs to start acting as a government, instead of a 4th-rate pantomime act.
Then it can start becoming a Labour government. But it’s got an awfully long way to go, because just now, under SKS, the lunatics are in charge of the asylum. (And a pantomime is at least amusing and entertaining!)
Has Pat McFadden ever run a start-up company? No, it appears he was a political university student and then a policy wonk and speechwriter.
He may have spoken to an advocate for so-called “agile” software development. Does it occur to him that a reactive approach to software development of say a computer game in small teams is not the same as a business plan. Or an approach that is scalable to a government body the size of the NHS or the benefits system, with critical outcomes that affect the lives of real people? What happens when they fail early and fail often?
Sure, trials and pilots and testing of innovative approaches can be good to get experience of how innovations work in practice before change is rolled out. Rather than a top-down imposition of policy that ploughs on regardless. But that experimentation needs to be done on a small scale, not as an organisational principle.
Much to agree with
Ironically this reflects a common failing of implementations of Agile.
Agile is based on devolution. Managers are meant to just put out general targets and then let the programmers decide what they think is think is most important to work on, with regular coordination/catchup meetings to ensure no effort is being wasted.
Problem is that managers do not like giving up their power in such a way, so the devolution is thrown out, the targets are hyperspecific, and the meetings frequent anyways because that’s the Agile thing to do.
Similarly, the Starmer Politburo has no interest in devolving power away from Westminister (despite what they promised during their campaigning, of course, though in fairness that lie was thrown out pretty early). They don’t want to restore Local Authority funding, they don’t want to give more devolution powers, etc etc.
NeoLabour have no vision at all, and so all we’re getting is reheated Cameronism (we’re even getting Big Society back: there was a rather shameful incident of a Minister telling citizens to donate to a GoFundMe to help people rebuild after Storm Bert. Might we soon get the same after Darragh?)
McFadden is a speech writer. all he knows is the Labour Party, Parliament and Whitehall. He knows precisely nothing about that which he speaks or writes, or what he thinks people actually require to DO to achieve anything. His experience is ZERO; but he is a politician, so he can make up all the answers as quickly as he can write a speech. And there you have British politics in a nutshell (except for the lobbyists, the vested interests the politicians actually listen to, and follow obediently before they ever DO anything)
Thank you and well said, John S and Richard and other readers.
John refers to the lobbyists and vested interests. The lobbyists tend to be from Big Finance, but they have rarely attended a credit or client acceptance review, discussion about payments and systems etc., i.e. where things really happen.
Lobbyists are rarely from makers. Even when Osborne was trumpeting “the march of the makers”, they, mainly the Engineering Employers Federation, were rare in Whitehall and even Brussels.
The people who do have the answers now, Tuesday morning, not Friday, are the likes of Richard, John S, Clive Parry, Mike Parr, Robin Stafford and PSR. Unfortunately, these gentlemen know their stuff, which makes neoliberal shills uncomfortable, and their ideas are not palatable for neoliberals. It’s the same with the Rowntree and Trussell organisations.
Thanks
I’m honoured, thank you Colonel.
The announcement was even worse than this vacuous inanity. It claimed that ‘work’ was to start now with results by spring but that funding would only be available from April. Go figure!
But the civil servants have a gauntlet now….
Stramer spoke of civil servants wanting managed decline .
He seems to offer, IMHO, unmanaged decline.
Agreed
I have a question for Pat McFadden (& Wes Streeting, Health Secretary, & also for my MP, who is a Junior Health Minister)
How do I get a doctor’s appointment “BY NEXT FRIDAY?”
(& what should be my plan B?)
Are you sure you weren’t watching an episode of Spitting Image? Surely no-one, even a Labour Minister, could spout such utter garbage?
“Suddenly the most important question isn’t ‘How do we get this right the first time?’ It’s ‘How do we make this better by next Friday?”
Labour has been out of power for 10 years.
Why did they not start planning 10 years ago?
Why did they wait until last weekend to start planning?
The obvious question.
There is no known answer, barring incompetence.
So McFadden wants to govern using Agile, a project management approach that was designed for software development. I’ve worked in IT as a technical architect for a long time now, and my experience of agile, when applied to other types of prject, has been utterly miserable.
Government projects already fail on a regular basis by any real measure of success; this would make it significantly worse. My impression of the TCP is continually reinforced by this sort of nonsense
Agile is being flogged very hard to young entrants to the civil service
They used AGILE to launch Universal Credit from about 2010.
I doubt it’s use as a project management tool, however you have to be bloody agile to use the services it produces from what I have seen,.
The missing piece – as ever- is proper detailed requirements analysis and limited – preferably no – mission creep.
McFadden mentions wanting to increase the number of families that “family hubs” reach.
Maybe I’m stupid, but has he counted how many “Surestart” centres the Tories closed?
Is it too simplistic, too “analogue” a solution, to open them again? Or is he hoping to replace them with an AI-powered smart Kiddie-Kiosk, which can dispense child-rearing advice, and churn out food-bank vouchers?
I ran a foodbank for 5 years sharing a building with a Surestart centre. I helped get the shared community centre/Surestart building built, but the key was £300,000 of MONEY from central government.
After that, the main resource was amazing, dedicated, trained, skilled real warm blooded people with skin on, helping other people, with long term life-changing interventions. That requires funding, and long term commitment. I don’t think McFadden has a clue.
I worked on admin side in a Children’s Centre in the Midlands for 8 years, the family workers built great relationships with local families, who in the end were bringing new families in. When the ring-fenced funding went, and our work had to be narrowly targeted and massively documented and analysed, the lack of general services/session open to all, and dessicated funding, sucked the life out of it. We were in a rural area, so closing other centres and hoping people would come to us was even more damaging than in town, and our outreach services were severely curtailed. It made us weep to see community trust and network eroded as we had not the resources to serve our community as we had. What a waste.
I am sad to hear that.
I can sense the anguish.
This is straight out of a modern Agile software development textbook where it is pertinent for small teams to deliver small increments of code often.
A complex modern software build will involve multiple teams and many dependencies and will, therefore, still involve a lot of up front planning.
And it’s not going to help you build a bridge or a hospital.
Precisely
Ironically enough the Agile methods cane out as a reaction to the miserable experience of trying to build software using the same process as you would to build a bridge.
But the mistake is to think there is a single appropriate technique.
As I said earlier, the iterative , test and learn approach to some project s and tasks does work, in fact it is sometimes the most appropriate method. In a project where there are huge uncertainties such as the Space X rocket or a large software project which are notoriously difficult to plan for, putting a prototype together, testing it, failing, correcting the mistakes, doing it again, can work.
As long as the finished product is properly tested BEFORE it is actually used. Which Horizon apparently wasn’t.
But you can’t apply this to building a bridge which has to be built not fail before anyone uses it.
Or in the day to day running of a government department such as HMRC or the Justice department. Years of austerity have left these organisations unable to do their jobs properly. They need proper funding and politicians that believe in the concept of properly functioning services staffed by reasonably contended employees.
This nonsense from McFadden, a man with no experience of business or real government administration, is just a cheap stunt designed to suggest that the stupid CS can do a much better job without needing more funding. Since we now have Reeves wittering on about finding efficiency savings of 5% and cutting down on waste in the exact same manner as the Tory idiots, we know the CS isn’t going to get the money it needs. Hence McFadden’s nonsense.
I read it and wish I hadn’t bothered. He basically opened his mouth and let his belly rumble.
Starmer, Reeves, Streeting and McFadden – they’re apparently cream of the crop. They really, really are clueless.
Who is going to extract the UK from the deep doo doo it’s in? There’s no end in sight to these nightmare governments.
It’s is funny how we managed to build big projects without the help of computers for decades yet now we can’t get even the basics right. Agile in Govt is a complete disaster – Agile is deployed to cater for something that takes years to develop/deliver whilst everything else is changing at the same time – as it does in IT a lot. But building a power station, train track, running the NHS isn’t the same – as you aren’t dealing with massive game changing changes like you see in IT. All these major projects ask three questions at the start – where are we now? Where do we want to get to? and how do we get there? – then a plan is developed. Some of the plans last 20+ years and the end point rarely changes. Govt can be similar if it becomes truly ‘Mission Focussed’ but it won’t because no one has agreed where the Country wants to get to. Time to develop National Strategies for the essentials in the U.K. and lock them in – then all Govts do is deliver the strategies as that is what ‘we’ all want. If they fail to deliver the Govt is fired just like in industry!
According to his Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_McFadden), McFadden went straight from being a student to working as a researcher for Donal Dewar.
He’s never had a job outside the Labour Party machine, so what he knows about the world of commerce and business could probably be written on the head of a pin.
I have met him, several times, usually in ‘off the record’ meetings.
The first time I did so I thought he was economically and politically illiterate and my opinion has not changed since then.
Thank you, all.
Further to that term agile, it’s bandied around in the City without people knowing what it means and where it came from. I groaned when Jeremy Hunt began using it. It is interesting that the people who throw the term around rarely, if ever, know the meaning and context. They just get a briefing from a lobbyist, the likes of me, and are made to feel clever, trendy, inside the small tent etc.
As a computer programmer in ‘the digital age’ I can tell you what is said in that quote is absolute nonsense. There are concepts of public A/B testing, but you should only use these to refine very minor and non-consequential details, not government policy. There are concepts of incremental / agile development, but unless these have a clearly defined high level plan, the project is doomed to failure (ever increasing technical debt of unfinished plans and unmaintained components).
This is a worrying attitude to see from high level figures. The entire “silicon valley startup” business model has always bothered me. It is designed to look flashy because its purpose is to attract investment, not build a working product. Forget ‘by next Friday’, many startup companies are not self-sustainable until years after they get funded.
Your assessment is spot on.
Thanks
So, in addition to the other sensible objections mentioned about Labour’s approach, there’s the standard start-up mentality prevalent over the last 25 years or so: the 5-year exit plan.
How does that work with government?
Standard exits for start-ups are:
1) IPO;
2) Get bought by bigger competitor;
3) Fail. (Very occasionally, some will plan in another 5 years if they having willing Angels, but not often. This is a kind of “soft-fail”, if you will.)
How does that work for a government?
1) Is an election equivalent to an IPO? Or is media/City approval closer? IPOs are generally a popularity party with little regard given to anything except the extraction potential of the *next* 5 years; so, that’s closer to winning an election, I guess. Except, it’s never an *Initial* Public Offering. It’s always like trying to issue new stock to a jaded market.
2) It would be very easy to slip into conspiracy-theory territory with this. However, given that the UK tends to follow foreign policy from the US (with few exceptions), and/or domestic policy predicated on The City’s desires, it reasonably easy to parse that into “selling out”. Moreover, if all you’re counting is the money score, then Global Capital (if we can posit such an entity) is certainly bigger – and very competitive for people’s hearts & minds (if not innovation or improvement).
3) Surely failure isn’t an option for a government? Well… it depends. If the soft-fail is *actually* more like our current election cycle, then maybe this is what we really see. Then again, if the Single Transferable Party (STP) is a serious proposition (and I think it is), then each of the STP partners never really fails on their own terms – it just changes the C-suite faces – which makes elections more like 1)-ish. Unfortunately, that only leaves hard failure modes (riots, societal collapse, revolution, yadda).
So is government like a start-up? No.
Or, at least, it really shouldn’t be. But, I really do think that they are imagining something like the above without irony. Without, in fact, realising that this should be considered satire rather than an instruction manual.
In reality, “start-up mode” is not appropriate for any organisation with responsibility for the wellbeing of people or infrastructure. For government, it is *essential* to realise that there are *no* exits – regardless of who’s in charge, governing must happen (unless we magically transform humanity into perfect moral actors giving us an anarchosocialist utopia).
Blaming the former CEO or “external factors” is not viable for a government. A government has near-total authority, in practical terms, and that goes hand-in-hand with a commensurate responsibility.
Short-termism, especially so blatantly espoused by people like McFadden, shows a total abdication of responsibility and should, therefore, require the removal of authority.
And that’s where we are. Like the worst of empire-building managers, each is trying to arrogate as much power to themselves (appropriately or not) in order to bargain their little empire into a promotion or their next job (be it in or out of parliament).
/rant
Thanks
Starmer has been using the term “agile” for some time, since shortly after he became LOTO.
In August 2021, “agile ceremonies” were recommended for cutting 90 Labour Party jobs (by Labour’s notorious General Secretary, David Evans, fresh from much agile manoeuvring in Croydon Council.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-starmer-jobs-cut-election-b1904088.html
“Labour’s general secretary David Evans unveiled the grand plan to staff on Tuesday, with around a quarter of those on the payroll facing the axe.
Employees were asked to start working in an “agile” and “multi-disciplinary” way as the party attempts to repair its shattered finances following legal pay-outs and cuts in contributions from unions.”
“Staff were also told to “adopt a product-mindset using agile ceremonies, be empowered to make decisions and encouraged to focus on rapid prototyping, deployment and iteration”.
John Cruddas used the term “agile” to describe Starmer himself in an article he wrote in January this year. The kindest thing one can say about Cruddas’ article is that it hasn’t aged well.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/2024/01/18/agile-keir-starmer-tipped-to-glide-into-downing-street-in-labours-centenary-year/
Starmer himself used the term “agile”, at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet earlier this month, “Instead we will find practical, agile ways to cooperate which serve the national interest.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-at-lord-mayors-banquet-2-december-2024
For anyone who was paying attention to the inner workings of Labour HQ since the time David Evans became Gen Sec and they decided to defenestrate Corbyn (and I WAS paying attention, from the inside of the party, albeit as a lowly newcomer far from London) it was very clear what was coming. None of this is a surprise to me.
Literally – there is nothing there. No substance whatsoever.
No principles, no ideology (except neoliberalism imposed from outside), no plan for government.
We are not being governed.
Downing Street and the Cabinet Office are being (very badly) managed, but the country?
We’re on our own, folks (except when they want to arrest us).
We got rid of Sunak’s government, but unfortunately, there was no one to replace them.
There still isn’t.
There will be an opportunity to watch foreign Secretary David Lammy being “agile” as he adjusts to the changes in Syria over the next days and weeks. It won’t be pretty watching him adjust to a “terrorist” becoming leader of Syria.
I’m sure Mr Netanyahu will provide timely guidance (from the courtroom perhaps?).
Thanks
As far as I’m concerned, the biggest problem with our politics for years, decades even, has been the lack of strategic vision. Even the big idea of Brexit totally lacked any strategy, hence it became a total mess.
It’s hard to envision any of today’s politicians having the ability to conceive of something as major and strategic as the NHS in way Bevan did. It’s now all about chasing the latest sound bite, and what today’s opinion poll says.
I would love to hear someone articulate a serious long-term vision for how this country should progress into the next 10, 20 or more years. I suspect that if they did, and it was sensible, they would get a lot of popular support (and no, Reform can’t do it either!).
I could try…
It is part of my new year plan
That would be very interesting, Richard. I look forward to it!
Just five months since the election and already this looks more and more like a one term government with each passing week. There is clearly no coherent political philosophy, just a dessicated managerialism and a commitment to politics-lite technocracy as the solution to all problems. McFadden’s speech shows both of those traits in spades, as did Starmer’s last week.
But the most obvious feature so far is the sheer political incompetence which has been demonstrated time after time. This started with the debacle of the winter fuel allowance and culminated in a technocratic budget which needlessly burned more political capital and totally failed to make tax fairer and give hope that things could soon at least start to get better after fourteen years of Tory spite and incompetence. Low-hanging fruit like CGT reform and restricting tax relief on pension contributions to the basic rate was conspicuously spurned in favour of a hike in employer’s Nic which is bound to cost many thousands of jobs and could even help tip the economy into recession in 2025. What price growth then?
Farage mustn’t be able to believe his luck.
Absolutely agree. Mindless worship of technology, banker worship, and as you say an utter inability to even start to use the tax system to reduce inequality.
And now I’ve just been hearing the idiot Reeves is looking for a 5% reduction in departmental spending through ‘efficiency savings’ and calling in ‘private sector expertise’.
So exactly the same drivel as we got from the Tories then. So this rubbish from McFadden is all part of the mess. FFS!
Richard, you have demolished this nonsense from McFadden re start up businesses, and I can do the same from the PoV of a now retired civil servant.
The first thing to say is that this iterative process seems to have been inspired by the approach taken by Musk’s Space X in developing their latest rocket, where it has apparently worked. Fine, as far as it goes. It works on a very specific project done by one particular organisation directed by Musk. Very highly motivated engineers with almost unlimited funding behind them developed a huge rocket more quickly than NASA could. As far as the private good public bad crowd are concerned that is proof of the ‘superiority’ of the private sector over the public.
Except that Space X and other commercial space operators have only come onto the scene after the public sector has spent decades on the space programme, taking financial and technical risks no private sector organisation could do.
I left HMRC at the end of August, and as I’ve said before, it’s main problem is lack of staff and low morale due to years of austerity and the Tories dislike of the public sector, especially the CS. As you’ve previously noted Richard, the greatest area of tax risk is SME’s, especially as regards CT. For my last couple of years at work there was no resource available to follow up on CT risks in my team’s cases, which is incredible. Traders who dodged VAT (my area) were very likely to have underpaid CT, but this was (is) no longer followed up. This is not a problem to be solved with ‘iterative’ development methodologies, it requires HMRC to be properly resourced over the long term and it’s staff to be treated with respect by the politicos.
So what is going on here? Firstly, there’s the stupid belief that technology can be a magic bullet that Starmer and co seem to believe so fervently. Ooooh, the tech bros In Silicon Valley do it so it must be good. Drivel.
Secondly, it’s another manifestation of the belief that the private sector always knows best, and that the stupid fuddy duddy public sector should always look to it for inspiration.
Thirdly, and most importantly, it’s an attempt to get something for nothing from an underfunded public sector because there’s ‘no money’. You’ve shown Richard that this isn’t the case but the labour idiots still don’t get it.
It is bollocks. A stupid gimmick. Piss off McFadden you clueless twat.
Your view of McFadden is close to mine.
You confirm all my fears about the latest state of HMRC
I need to contact my old colleagues from work to see if anything in HMRC has improved under labour.
Somehow I think I know the answer already.
As for McFadden……
I wish you well in retirement.
There are many who know about and share your concerns (as I’m sure you know).
Your identification of the core issues is accurate & let’s hope the commitment to extra staff from the “Labour” government bears fruit…
Thank you MG. I don’t think labour”s half hearted announcement a few months ago about an extra 200 compliance staff is really going solve HMRC’s resource problems. Better than nothing, but not nearly enough. To solve recruitment and retention problems requires serious funding, not gimmicks from McFadden or Reeves expecting 5% savings from cutting out ‘waste’.
As usual , no probing of McFadden’s stupidity by @BBC .
All these sallies – sort of dead cat ‘ideas’ to distract from the obvious need for unemployed doctors to be employed – and the tens of thousands of nurses recruited.
One tries not to personally dislike public figures – but with McFadden’s particular combination of complacency, self satisfaction and ignorance its very difficult.
From the Spectator: New prisons will be fast-tracked through the planning process by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner under new laws.
Why build more prison for criminals when what is needed is more social housing for law-abiding citizens?
Angela Rayner needs to be reformed right out of office pronto!
Excellent question.
The simple fact of not wishing to return the Elgin marbles to their rightful owners is symptomatic of the shambles. Sunak v 2. . We need a national energy and transport, water and national housing strategy, we need to work out a way of funding local government and all that that is technically responsible for. We need a defence strategy.
The cabinet is too big do a Lloyd George I think the times demand it .
Attlee had something like 250 cabinet sub committees working on all aspects. This lot go back to their offices put a bid together then come back to find out it’s not happening .
One termed. Unless they really start to get a grip no sign of that unfortunately. I even begin to think that being told what to do by Isabella van der Lyon is better than this bunch