After years of drought, the words fall like precious drops of water. No mention of public servants putting “scars on his back”, as Tony Blair put it, or “enemies of enterprise” (David Cameron). Instead this Tory manifesto talks about the “good government can do” and celebrates the millions who serve the public in a “noble vocation”.
Here’s ammunition aplenty for the likes of the cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, FDA union general secretary Dave Penman, council chief executives and public sector leaders high and low. During the next five years, whenever they encounter a stone wall, over pay, pensions, staff numbers – and they certainly will, they can dig out this manifesto and at once will have a chisel.
There’s no question that these words are welcome and fortifying. Here’s the Tory party saying the state is super – up to a point. And of course, it is also the party of low taxation. But in this manifesto, we’re hearing it for regulators, whose “frameworks protect our security and ensure the welfare of children and younger people”.
The public, including presumably readers of the Daily Mail, are enjoined to show respect. This manifesto states: “We will run public services in accordance with their values as national and local institutions”. That could mean nothing but could mean a lot; it depends how cynical you feel.
Of course we should be circumspect about fiscal intentions and suspicious about spending plans. There is language about reducing the cost of regulation, presumably meaning job cuts. And it’s right to interrogate the document about what might actually change in terms of Whitehall staffing or scheduled cuts in council grants.
Vast areas remain obscure, including the distribution formula for local government in England once business rates are fully localised. Public managers won’t get carried away. They will read the few examples of detail in the manifesto. Previous governments have pledged decentralisation and dispersal of civil servants and, since at least the 1960s, ministries and agencies have made concessions to moving functions out of London and the south-east.
Maybe, like her predecessors, Theresa May will make a brief effort then give up, frustrated by the opposition as much of her ministers as of senior officials. But the language in the manifesto around reviving the rest of the UK outside London and the south-east does suggests a determination, this time, to force the issue. Mayors and councillors will surely be queuing up to offer to become the proposed hubs, accommodating displaced departments.
No localist she. The manifesto message for councils is not promising; a “national framework” for devolution is oxymoronic, while the social care plans show little or no awareness of council function or finance.
Big changes are afoot in specific areas, notably the police. The proposed national infrastructure force would amalgamate the separate police services for transport, defence and nuclear, and yet more change awaits police specialists in fraud and criminal intelligence.
There is no detail but the Tories seem to have accepted that you can’t take back control without employing more controllers, who would, presumably, work in HMRC and the Border Force.
Public managers can indulge themselves in a brief moment of belief that the prime minister, or perhaps her adviser Nick Timothy, are reverting to what was once the common ground of British politics, belief in the worth and potential of the state.
But moments last only 60 seconds. The cold light dawns after the election when – assuming the Tories win – May immediately revises the austerity reinforced in the March budget.
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