Re-release: Yes, Minister

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing, is Gavin Williamson really that bad? Chris, is Gavin Williamson really that bad? Well, if you sort of base it on... I think, sorry to interrupt, I think first of all, we need to say who he is for listeners who might not be familiar with him. Well, but if they've listened to our podcast...

Speaker B: 00:00:42

If they listen to us, they'll definitely know who he is. Yeah, he's the official MP of the Cognitive Engineering Podcast.

Speaker C: 00:00:49

So Gavin Williamson is currently the Secretary of State for Education in the UK. He was previously Secretary of State for Defence, and I think he was Chief Whip as well previously, and he's a Conservative Member of Parliament. And he's so much more as well. He's so much more as well.

Speaker B: 00:01:11

We previously mentioned him, haven't we, on the podcast about how to spot liars.

Speaker C: 00:01:15

We have previously mentioned him, yeah, in relation, I think, first of all, we mentioned him when he was in defence, and it was about the Huawei leak, basically, the discussion that was being had behind closed doors. And then he was effectively fingered for leaking this sensitive information. But then we also talked about him for the other memorable thing he oversaw, which was the British exam algorithm debacle, where GCSEs and A-Levels, yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: 00:01:55

Yeah, but we also, we actually did also mention him in the context of taking credit for other people's achievements. That's right. He said Britain was the best country in the world.

Speaker C: 00:02:03

So he's featured heavily. And now the thing that really sort of brought this forward was that literally the day before primary schools were due to go back in the UK after the Christmas holidays, the day before, he oversaw the decision to announce that they weren't going to go back after all. So they'd had the entire Christmas holidays, everybody had been telling them it probably wasn't a great idea. And then it was literally Sunday evening that they announced this with all the schools sitting there expecting to have children turn up on the...

Speaker A: 00:02:42

I think it's worse than that. He did it. I could be wrong because two of my children are in primary. It's on the actual day that they did start back.

Speaker C: 00:02:49

Oh, yeah, you're right, you're right. To add to the excitement, yes, they all went back for a day first, gave one another COVID and then went back home again. So, yeah, no, you're right. It's even better than that. So this got me thinking and he was again pilloried in the press for all of this. And this got me thinking about, is he individually that incompetent? And first of all, are all these things his fault? And secondly, has he been making as bad, a poor set of decisions as it appears that he would have been doing at first glance? Because I kind of refuse to believe that he is as bad as he's made out to be in certain parts of the press. Including this podcast. Yeah, well, what is, you know, I mean, we'll talk more broadly about, you know, things like responsibilities for decisions and what you're accountable for and so on. But in the first instance, Gavin Williamson discuss.

Speaker A: 00:04:06

One thing, one of my favorite sort of facts about Gavin Williamson, which I know we've mentioned before, but I think deserves mentioning again, is wasn't it when he was chief whip, he didn't have a tarantula in a tarantula area or something? And can you tell us about that? What was that all about?

Speaker C: 00:04:20

Well, essentially, yeah, he was chief whip, which is sort of, you know, considered to be the position which requires the most politicking with a small p. And, you know, and so there's this sense that he saw himself as kind of Frank Underhill, but that actually, he's Frank Spencer. And so he kept this, this kind of this tarantula on his desk as a sign of sort of to intimidate, you know, people.

Speaker B: 00:04:52

So was it a real tarantula? It was a real tarantula. A stuffed one?

Speaker C: 00:04:55

Yeah, no, a real tarantula. Yeah, right.

Speaker A: 00:04:57

I mean, yeah, I mean, something that reminds, that springs to mind, there was a UN diplomat died recently. Was it Brian Urquhart, I think? And one of the things he talked about, I think it was in reference to one of the, one of the presidents of the United Nations. And he talked, the phrases along the lines of, you know, ambitious mediocrity, something

Speaker C: 00:05:22

like that. Yeah, well, I think this is it. So, you know, because there's a counter-narrative to all of this, right? Because he, like the, I think there are a few things going on, but I think there's a definite degree of classism going on, right? That the upper middle class left have always had it in for lower middle class Tories. And if they're northern, that's even worse. Brasel's a man. Exactly. They see it as a massive betrayal, you know, when they all sort of went over to Thatcher in the 80s, you know, they've hated them ever since. And so there's, he fits all of those kinds of bills. You know, a lot of what is said about him is kind of sneering in tone. Yeah, because famously he used to be a fireplace salesman. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, so he's got this sort of fairly, you know, his dad was a local government worker, his mom, Beverly, worked in a job center. So there's, you know, he wasn't poor, but he wasn't rich.

Speaker B: 00:06:26

It is hard to think of a job which is more designed to incite snobbery than being a fireplace salesman. Yeah, exactly. It's very specific. It's the sort of thing that George Grossmith would have made one of his comic characters a fireplace salesman. There's just something comedic about it.

Speaker C: 00:06:43

There is. And I think there's something of the Richard Nixon about him, not in terms of, you know, necessarily his personality or anything, but the way Nixon was, you know, widely sort of sneered at throughout his career. So yeah, so I think there's that kind of thing going on. But then I also think there's this issue of like, well, what can you be expected to be responsible for if you are a minister? What is it sensible to imagine that you could have affected? And, you know, why is it that ministers do or don't take responsibility for different decisions? So now might be the time to delve into the British Constitution.

Speaker B: 00:07:30

nal standards, i.e. since the: 1950

Speaker C: 00:10:00

I think in totality, it's about close to 200,000 people across the, yeah, it's about 60,000 civil servants.

Speaker B: 00:10:08

scandals from Wikipedia since: 1990

Speaker A: 00:11:51

So I'm going to take a stab and then you as well, Chris. I'm going to say 10% are going to be the minister. And Chris?

Speaker C: 00:11:57

Yeah, well, I think there will be a number which will be them being involved in a personal scandal. So being found on, you know, wandering around Clapham Common at three o'clock in the morning. And then I think there are going to be some where it is, it's going to be very difficult to say, like Windrush, you know, there was definitely a, it wasn't an individual ministerial push, but you know, there was this whole business about having inadvertently misled the house and, and it was no doubt government policy to put the screws on, on immigration. But was it Home Secretary's fault? You know, difficult to say. So I'm going to, I'm going to say, I reckon maybe more like 20-ish percent of them ministerial faults. Get ready.

Speaker B: 00:12:53

90% of them. 90% are ministerial, are the individual. So if I just, I mean, just whizzing through, I'm going to just pick a few cash for questions. MPs, Jonathan Aitken, corruption, effectively minister. The Keith Vaz, Mandelson-Hinduja scandal, personal ministerial decisions. We mentioned Ron Davis, Mark Oten and the Rent Boys minister, Tessa Jowell, finances ministers, the expenses, Peter Hain with the donations. Derek Conway, cash for influence, parliamentary expenses. Liam Fox, Adam Werritty, ministerial decision. Falkirk candidate selection, Labour Party. David Cameron and the deceased Pawsign individual. You know, so. What was that one? What was the David Cameron deceased Pawsign claim? What was that? The dead pig, pig gate.

Speaker A: 00:13:53

Oh, okay, sorry. So yeah, I guess that kind of was this.

Speaker B: 00:13:58

he contaminated blood scandal: 2017

Speaker C: 00:15:39

Yeah, and I and I think I think that, you know, often, often they become scandals because the minister ends up resigning, which suggests that, you know, it's a loaded sample, right? Because there are other things which probably don't get into the like, like, for example, when the MoD spent hundreds of millions of pounds on effectively sort of messing up their their aircraft for the aircraft carrier sort of procurement, you know, it was a really expensive decision that wasn't, you know, it wasn't obviously erroneous and pointable to to any person, but it was a big thing. And it, you know, got a lot of pressure, but nobody had to resign about it because it wasn't a scandal. If you, you know, if you're found sort of granting favour to an associate or something, the reason that becomes a scandal is because it's so obviously your fault. And it builds up a big, big thing. But ones where the blame isn't so concentrated, obviously concentrated, they don't they don't count as scandals, I suppose. They're just, you know, a sign of government incompetence.

Speaker B: 00:16:50

I think that's definitely true. And I mean, you know, a lot of the problems with things that go wrong with departments are things which are just yet botched procurement and overspends and those kinds of things which, you know, are so common as to not be worth even writing down in a list. But again, they're not. I mean, yeah. So sorry, Fraser. Yeah, a quick question.

Speaker A: 00:17:12

I mean, part of the issue here, isn't it, that is politics by its very nature is a very public enterprise. And secondly, the kind of people who go into politics. I think I think one of the issues that happens is that something awful happens and the initial reaction always needs to be no, no, no, no, no. It's all fine. It's all fine. There's no I wouldn't possibly. And then you've got this slippery slope to to ignominy, essentially. And isn't it to do with the nature of politicians or am I just sort of being.

Speaker C: 00:17:46

Yeah, I think you might be on to something there because this notion of individual ministerial responsibility is effectively because it's part of the British constitution. It is unenforceable. And so it relies on a sense of honor. Right. So if you look at. There's your problem. Yeah, there's your problem. So if you look, if you look at famous cases of resignations or off tendered resignations that have been considered honorable, you know, like, so if you look at John Knott and Lord Carrington around the the Falklands war, you know, I mean, they couldn't they weren't General Gutierre. They couldn't possibly known that, you know, they might have they might have had some probability assessment about all of that happening. But, you know, John, not, you know, the reason he was under pressure was because he'd kind of cut funding during during an economic recession, you know, for the military. Well, you know, that's money that would have been could have been spent on hospitals or something. And so, you know, some minister for health would have been sat there saying, oh, sorry, I didn't pay for the hospitals. Now I've got to resign because we spent them on, you know, naval frigates or something. So but those, you know, those two tended resignations were based on departmental activity and maybe a bit of mishandling, certainly in the case of the Foreign Office of of the policy bar, you know, maybe at ministerial level. But they they were, you know, basically, they didn't have they didn't have to resign, even based on the individual ministerial responsibility. But they did. And there's the other case of Estelle Morris, who famously resigned as education secretary, Gavin Williamson, take note, for a kind of exam marking scandal. They were struggling to vet the the the markers. And she she she basically her quote was she she felt she had been sort of second best and that she had to be honest with herself and and offered her resignation and effectively resign. And so those are, you know, fairly recent examples of honorable resignations where arguably you'd say, hang on a minute, you know, that you're definitely not personally culpable for what's what's going on there.

Speaker B: 00:20:25

t history, since at least the: 1970

Speaker A: 00:22:05

Listen, I've got a quick question. We need to sort of wrap up fairly soon, but I've got a question. And then I've got another question after that. It strikes me that two things. First of all, if we think about civil servants and if we think about politicians, if we think about what personality types they might have, I don't know if that's a good way to think of it or not. But it strikes me that politicians and civil servants must be about as different as you can get, I would have thought. I mean, in my mind, civil servants are quite sort of dry, methodical, maybe not massively dynamic, but essentially hardworking, honest, that kind of thing. OK, whereas politicians, you know, we talked about sort of can be quite flamboyant. Yeah, I've got a hypothesis.

Speaker B: 00:22:53

I could see where you're going.

Speaker A: 00:22:54

And I mean, let's see, because what I wanted to ask is, of course, you're both former civil servants. And I was just curious, actually, to get a bit of gossip, not individual gossip, but what is the view amongst civil servants of politicians? Because you often hear from politicians moaning about civil servants. Yeah, well, is there a general view that there is a bunch of, you know, of chances?

Speaker B: 00:23:18

I'll get to that in a sec. I just want to touch on your first point about personality types. I think that's a valid observation. And if I had to think of a sort of absolutely archetypical combination of a politician and a senior civil servant, PUS, someone like that, they would be very, very similar, except that the civil servant would be the introvert version. They would be the mastermind type, whereas the politician might be more of the field marshal type. Right. But I think they generally there's a similarity in terms of probably being quite sort of intelligent, being quite, you know, being capable of absorbing lots of information at the same time, probably being quite analytical. I think most politicians are like that, you know, but I think it's that probably the key caricature difference would be that kind of extroversion versus introversion, that if you like the limelight, civil service is not the job for you. Now, so just to answer your second question, and I have to say this, I was not a very good civil servant. I'm not made to be a civil servant. But just thinking about what other people, obviously, civil servants always moan about politicians because they have sort of lepidopteran whims and, you know, they're butterfly like, you know, so they're sort of, you know, oh, what's the minister suddenly got a visit to Scotland? So suddenly we're working on, you know, ministry defence spending in Scotland when we should be doing something else. Everyone thinks they're very short termist. Everyone thinks they're sort of driven by political rather than fundamentally important things, all of which is, you know, fair characterisations. But of course, you know, politicians see the problems the other way round of, you know, the civil service being too obsessed with sort of, or not, you know, not really caring about the things that are really important. And of course, politicians, unlike civil servants, are appointed by the people and see themselves as representing the people. And that's what politics is. The things that civil servants complain about, oh, this guy's being really political. Politicians, quite rightly, would think, yes, but it's not like party politics. What it is, is a manifesto that I was elected to carry out. And I think that, but I think it's a really, really good relationship. I think there's a lot of dynamism. I would hate it if, you know, they always agreed. It would be terrible if civil servants and politicians just agreed with each other. It works really well because of those differences. You know, that civil servants are essentially, how do we execute things in a way that is nice and smooth and, you know, justified, and that we can account for the way we're spending public money. And politicians are like, we need to get stuff done, you know, and I think that's a good combo.

Speaker A: 00:26:13

I must admit, as much as I, you know, I have, like a lot of people, a general distaste for politicians. If I was to sit down for dinner and say, and given choice, do you want to sit down with a bunch of politicians or a bunch of civil servants? Apologies, guys. I would probably say the politicians, if nothing else, would be a bit fun, I would have thought.

Speaker C: 00:26:28

Chris? Well, I think the perceptions of the civil service change the more remote you become from ministers. So I think people doing sort of analytical posts where you are maybe working on long term projects and you're removed from the cut and thrust of, you know, the private office. I think there is very much that view of why do they keep changing the policy all the time? We've done the analysis. We know what the right thing is. Let's just execute this. So there's this sense that the data, you know, it's almost like being driven by the science, right, which we hear a lot at the moment. But the data sort of should determine what gets done, not the whims of the public, you know. So I think you get that side of things. But I think as people get closer into working in the private office, you start to see the dynamics that they operate under and what politicians are optimising against, right. And that is two things. It is, you know, public opinion and their accountability to public opinion, which obviously changes quite dynamically. But also it is that small or it is that party politics because their incentives are driven by patronage from, you know, from the top, from the prime minister and down and kind of making sure that they are serving their master in that way. You know, they've got two bosses. They've got the kind of the people. But principally, they've got the prime minister or their, you know, their secretary of state or whatever, if they're a junior minister. And so, yeah, I think it's, you then start to understand those dynamics and you realise that actually the success of a minister is not driven by their effectiveness in the department. That is a fairly minor driver of, you know, as long as they don't cock things up, it's about, you know, the extent to which they, you know, are driving forward a policy and achieving the things civil servants want is not their success criteria. That's not what they're optimising against.

Speaker A: 00:28:47

Okay, we need to wind things up before we do. Is there any?

Speaker B: 00:28:52

Yeah, I just did a couple of things. Well, the main one being that, you know, I mentioned at the beginning the sort of distinction between blame and responsibility. And I think, you know, it is, let's not forget that that's a useful, that's how delegation works, you know, it's not. Yeah, if you say to someone, look, we're going to hold you responsible for things going, okay, that the point is that that incentivises them to try and make sure they do go, okay, even though it might be the case that when something goes wrong, it's not in some sense their fault. So, so I just wanted to say it's not, it's not kind of a weird rule. Ministerial responsibility has a very good kind of game theoretical foundation as a solution to the principal agent problem, you know?

Speaker C: 00:29:34

Yeah, I think, I think it's, it's almost like the, the evolutionary strategy of autophysis where, where sort of largely ants and termites destroy themselves to sort of protect the colony. And I think there's a, there's an element with individual ministerial responsibility where you need your leader to effectively lash themselves to, to the policy and become personally attached to it. Because it's that level of commitment that means people buy into, it increases the, the success of, or the chances of it being successful, because they are utterly committed to it, and they have to be seen to be utterly committed to it. And then others will, will, will follow. And so when that goes wrong, you need that kind of, you can't then detach the person from and say, oh, actually, I didn't really care about that thing. And I, you know, those weren't really the decisions I wanted to make. These are the ones I really wanted to make. They've lost all credibility. So you need that, that, you know, it's like the captain of the ship. They have to go, they have to go down with it if it's, if it's sinking.

Speaker A: 00:30:45

Nick, was there another point or you're done?

Speaker B: 00:30:46

No, not really. I was just gonna, I was gonna delve into the philosophy of, of, of blame and causation and how it's actually a bit incoherent anyway. But I think we haven't got time for that. There is a question I want to ask.

Speaker A: 00:30:58

Um, who is your favorite worst minister? Okay. Who's your best worst minister?

Speaker B: 00:31:08

mbolic of the, of the sort of: 1990

Speaker A: 00:33:23

Grand eloquent sort of poposity self-righteousness. It's just wonderful.

Speaker C: 00:33:27

But if you're going to, if you're going to go for it, you should, you should really brass neck it. Shouldn't you? He was all in at that point, wasn't he? So, uh, yeah, I think mine is, um, is probably a bit more earnest really. Um, in that it's Neville Chamberlain as, as prime minister. Um, because I think he, he gets an enormously hard rap historically, right. Um, for, you know, the policy of appeasement and, and, uh, and so on. And I think if you actually look back at him and the decisions he made, um, I think they were probably mostly the right decisions, right. I mean, you know, at no point was the UK going to, going to sort of unilaterally declare war on Germany or, or indeed, you know, put themselves at risk of having to do so unnecessarily. So appeasement had to kind of, you had to kind of go through appeasement in order to, to, you know, take Churchill's position. And so I think, but it shows that even though I think the decisions he would make, he was making with the information he had at the time were the right ones at the point at which you realize they're the wrong ones. The person themselves has to go because, you know, that that's just the way that the systems were. He could not have credibly, and in fact, didn't credibly try and mount a sort of, you know, um, wartime government.

Speaker B: 00:34:55

I think he was quite a good Lord. He was a very thoughtful and, uh, and you know, he worked right. I thought he was, yeah, he's very good after his life in politics, but the, the politics,

Speaker A: 00:35:09

he died of cancer just months after. Did he? Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:35:12

I might be thinking of someone else. Hang on a minute.

Speaker A: 00:35:14

While you check that out, Chris, you make a good point because actually he's popularly perceived as being a failure and not, you know, cause also Churchill comes next and Churchill's meant to be this wonderful, you know, great white hero. But, um, first of all, as you say it, but first of all, no one, everyone desperately wanted to avoid a war. Okay. Because of what, you know, cause of the, of the great war, no one wanted that. Yeah. So you're right. And so he was pursuing a policy that was popular. One, two, interesting little fact. I think he was chancellor of the exchequer or ministry of minister of defense in, in the mid thirties and he championed the cause of developing spitfire, sorry, developing fighter planes. Okay. And so the spitfire project is largely down to him that he sort of provided funding for that and also radar. Okay. And you know who opposed them? Cause they want to spend money on, I think ships and also, but mainly bombers was Churchill. So the irony of it is that when Churchill was in place, the, the, the, the, the two tools that, you know, that served us well in, in the battle of Britain were precisely what Chamberlain had developed.

Speaker B: 00:36:16

Um, Nick. Anyway, you're absolutely right. I was thinking of Anthony Eden, I think. So you can scrub that whole bit out. Yeah, sure.

Speaker A: 00:36:22

Um, okay. I don't really have one because I quite like all these sleazy Tories from the nineties and each time I think of one, I just, it just, it just makes my skin crawl. I can't bear, I can't bring myself to say that someone like David Mello is my favorite. Geoffrey Archer is great. I've got him up there as well. Yeah. Geoffrey Archer. And what was the name of the cash for questions guy? Him with the weird wife.

Speaker C: 00:36:43

Um, oh, I can see them. The pair of them.

Speaker A: 00:36:46

Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:36:46

Hamilton. Hamilton.

Speaker A: 00:36:47

Hamilton. That's it.

Speaker C: 00:36:49

What's his first name?

Speaker B: 00:36:50

Neil and Christine Hamilton. Yeah. Just awful people. Um, I do have one final quote to read to you. Gordon Brown. Um, uh, one of, one of a few scandals, uh, to rock the Gordon Brown administration. Um, where he, uh, he sort of was being interviewed by the press and he said, I take full responsibility for what happens. And that's why the person who was responsible went immediately.

Speaker A: 00:37:18

Brilliant. I like it.

Speaker B: 00:37:19

I like it to a clip of that because it's so wonderful.

Speaker A: 00:37:22

Okay. We'll stop there before we finish a bit of housekeeping. Um, just to say, um, we want you to contact us if you've got any comments on, on, on the podcast, or if, especially if you've got any suggestions about topics you'd like to cover us, um, that you'd like us to cover and that you can contact us by email at podcast.alephinsights.com. And also if you've enjoyed listening to this podcast, please do leave us a review wherever you get it from. And, uh, that helps others to find it as well. Thank you for listening. We've been here with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. I'm Fraser McGruer. Thanks. Until next time. Bye-bye.