Dominic Cummings is one of those men who thinks, probably rightly, that the UK should be doing much better than it is. We can all agree on that I think. But, unlike most people he would never admit that he doesn't know the reason why. He pretends that he does. The entire civil service is now being lumped in with the EU as being at the root of our difficulties. Not dynamic or innovative enough is his diagnosis. I skim read his recent and much commented on blog post advertising for 'weirdos and misfits' to work alongside him in Whitehall and it reminded me of people I met in my own small career.
Men like him have a touching faith in the magic wand, the silver bullet, a clever ruse to unblock the arteries and catapult you to the top of your chosen field, while avoiding a lot of slow, regular, highly focused investment and grinding hard work over a very long period. The sort of work you know your competitors have put in and who are now reaping the rewards.
They want to emulate those competitors but do it in a way that bypasses all that troublesome effort in expensive R & D, prototypes, repetitive field trials and miniscule step-by-step progress that needs serious long term thinking and commitment. Boards of directors are often attracted to this sort of thing, especially directors who have little idea of the market they operate in.
In this vein, someone named Giles Wilkes has written an interesting response to Cummings' blog post in Prospect Magazine: Dominic Cummings’s naïve faith in the power of the state. It's well worth a read.
"....you have to love his ferocious optimism. Britain is into its second decade of disappointing productivity, and set to embark upon a Brexit project widely expected to make it worse. Problems gnarly with age remain stuck: regional disparities, weak skills, weak uptake of technology, a looming social care crisis… But Cummings sees 'trillion dollar bills lying on the street,' within reach if we just lift the quality of human capital in government. In sharp contrast to technological stagnationists such as Robert Gordon, he looks forward to another economic golden age—one of artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion and genomic medicine—if we just put the right set of near-geniuses in the centre."
The 'free market' is not working as it should so government intervention is needed. As Wilkes goes on:
"I am far from the first to note how very un-Conservative is the implied faith in the state to solve chronic issues through sheer force of mind. You can almost see an intellectual sympathy with the nationalisation mindset of Labour’s John McDonnell—both sides seem to think that if only the state would thoroughly grip a problem, all the dilemmas can be dissolved. For McDonnell, the deus ex machina is state ownership, in Cummings’s view it is three standard-deviation brains using zeitgeisty techniques like prediction tournaments and Seeing Rooms."
I would be far more impressed if Brexit Johnson and Cummings announced a 25 year programme which had cross-party consensus to bring us level with our main competitors. This would be pursued whichever government was in power and not subject to the whims of the current gang in charge in the race to get some short-term political kudos.
How easy all these things must look to men like Dominic Cummings at the outset. Take Crossrail as an example. The project was approved in 2007 so I assume the planning stage was started well before that. It's a 73 mile piece of railway crossing London from east to west, originally scheduled to open in 2018 but not expected now to be operational before Autumn 2021. That's around 15-20 years for a short stretch of railway at £246 million a mile!
Bear this in mind as Sajid Javid promises an, "infrastructure revolution" in his first budget as chancellor, Javid indicated there would be up to £100 billion available for "transformative" projects across the country over the coming years.
"With this Budget we will unleash Britain's potential - uniting our great country, opening a new chapter for our economy and ushering in a decade of renewal," Javid said.
"With this Budget we will unleash Britain's potential - uniting our great country, opening a new chapter for our economy and ushering in a decade of renewal," Javid said.
Any optimism that this infrastructure revolution will actually happen in the next five years is for the birds and if the economy takes a downturn, it probably won't happen at all.
Javid claims that the UK will take advantage of 'huge opportunities' once the country has left the EU although as usual we don't learn exactly what these 'opportunities' are. Richard Tice, Chairman of The Brexit Party writes a piece for Brexit Central (sadly due to close at the end of January having done all the damage it hoped to achieve. I'll be sorry to see it go. It's given me so much to laugh at over its short life) on why he lost his bid to become an MP in Hartlepool but also saying:
"However, the nation’s prospects are healthy and hearty as we leave the EU. Businesses and investors will thrive on this new-found confidence, leading to more jobs and higher wages. Let’s feast throughout 2020 on these delicious and wholesome Brexit opportunities."
So many 'opportunities' and so 'delicious and wholesome' - does anyone actually know what they are? What are we going to do outside the EU that we couldn't do as a member? When will we be told?
The Telegraph last Saturday was full of reports complaining about various aspects of life in Britain from ethical vegans, revamped computer log-ins for NHS workers, the government's apprenticship scheme turning into farce, criminals who commit up to 60 offences before facing prison, paedophiles signing themselves off the sex offenders register, Grenfell families facing an 8 wait for justice, a rise in fly-tipping and an op-ed by Ross Clark on how the Tories privatised the rail industry but now need to 'fix it'. None of them remotely connected to the EU at all.
On the eve of our departure from the hated EU after which we can make our own laws I don't see any reference to any EU regulation that must urgently be put on the list of candidates for immediate repeal so we can take advantage of the huge, delicious and wholesome opportunities.
What is Brexit for?
