Discussion about this post

User's avatar
James Price's avatar

Iain you were an amazing adviser, and got more done than most I've worked with. I do agree with Jon's commend below that, as so often, you're overly generous! This is normally a virtue, but I fear that unless more radical reforms come about, then the administrative state will continue to strangle the very large reforms the country needs.

But that's ok; when we win I'm going to make you the DfE Perm Sec and you can show them how it's done!

Expand full comment
Jon's avatar

I think the article is well-intentioned, but seems overly generous.

To an outsider, I would say that your definition of 'groupthink' looks an awful lot like bias. If civil servants can't effect the policies of the elected people above them because they find them unconscionable, they should resign, join a pressure group and make room for someone who can. They don't just undermine the sense of impartiality of your profession, but also the idea that the rest of us should be compelled on pain of imprisonment to continue to pay for them.

It's also interesting that your examples of 'right leaning thinkers' wouldn't consider themselves as such, or be considered as such outside of the world in which you inhabit. They are centrists. Haidt helped to campaign for the Democrats. Goodhart was a correspondent for Prospect, the FT and Guardian (hardly right wing publications) and works at Policy Exchange, which is pretty leftie by conservative standards. Actual right leaning thinkers don't even get an airing in the post, which could be instructive of your own group-think (bias?!) If the civil service Overton window now classes the Democrats as right leaning because they advocate for freedom of speech approaches which were more or less universal ten years ago, it might be time to leave Westminster and do something a little less... rarified for a few months?

Is there also something surprising here about conservative mind-sets seeking to preserve alternate points of view, but the modern left being more religious in character (a crusade or it's nothing) and therefore less ideologically compatible with contrarian ideas. This has certainly changed over the course of my adult life (which more or less started with the election of New Labour).

Expand full comment
7 more comments...

No posts