Books with crisis in the title should generally be avoided. This is a worthwhile exception because its analysis is cautious and sensible, and the crisis it describes is real – the British state, granddaddy of them all, is falling apart. Above the froth of political argument, the state used to have a coherent sense of purpose, there was camaraderie among the elite and an integrated apparatus of rule. But government in Britain doesn’t work any more, and no one knows what to do about it.

This book focuses on administrative matters like transport policy and civil service reform, which sounds a bit dull. But Sir Christopher Foster tells a fascinating story that explains how a focus on targets and professionalism in the public sector has led to really bad and ineffective governance because the respective roles of politicians and civil servants have both been undermined. Foster’s writing is never stylish, but it is always focused and compelling. He has an administrator’s talent for writing a good brief, and a raconteur’s ear for a good anecdote.

When politics was more clearly structured between left and right there was lively debate based on disagreement about how the country should go forward. But there was also agreement about the goalposts – politics was about nation states, it was about left and right, the national interest, the unions and the bosses. We knew what we were arguing about, which provided agreed ‘terms of reference’ for national administration. Britain was especially stable, with a long-established Civil Service mission of public service, and a long line of radicals at least as keen on tradition as their conservative counterparts.

Now civil servants are mistrusted. Politicians are skeptical that something as ethereal as ‘mission’ can sustain a large bureaucracy; targets and measurements are needed. The functional organisation of the universal Civil Service has therefore been replaced by something more piecemeal, with fragmented agencies, contradictory central direction and dispersed expertise. Attacks on ‘big government’ and cuts in the Civil Service hit specialists and experts particularly hard, making it hard to provide the detailed policy guidance that politicians relied on. It was increasingly necessary to buy-in knowledge from consultants and academics with their own agendas. 

The loss of expertise in the Civil Service has encouraged politicians to surround themselves with special advisors and spin doctors. They generate lots of ideas, but they are separated from the people who actually govern, who have to make messy compromises to implement policies. The complexities and competing interests involved in making things happen are of no interest to the new mandarins, who don’t understand how to exercise power or make policy work. The ‘joined-up’ government that people like to talk about is thus further away than ever. The messy politics of competing sectional interests cannot be managed away by consultants, targets, initiatives and PowerPoint presentations. We no longer have a vocabulary to generalise interests in a way that can make sense in a social and political context.

MPs are no better than the civil servants they disdain. They are motivated more by constituency work than by big ideas, Lord Nolan and the anti-corruption crusade has cut off avenues of external engagement, there is less opportunity to shine in the House of Commons. It is a familiar story, but Foster draws out the consequences well. Because MPs are less equipped to scrutinise bills, the role has defaulted to the House of Lords, whose role has increased at precisely the time when distaste for their privileged position has prompted reform. And in a less political environment, lawyerly analysis is to the fore. Foster notes that now ‘the most active and coherent thinking in Britain about the future of government is among judges, barristers and academic lawyers.’ (p293)

Foster is strong on description, but his analysis is weak and his suggestions frivolous because he is astonishingly disengaged in politics. The book relies on personal observation, which idealises the recent past. The simultaneous evisceration of the roles of MPs and of civil servants means that less talented individuals are bound to fill them, and they will not be challenged and developed in the world that Foster describes. But his analysis too often focuses on individual weakness without probing into the context.

It also fails to consider the present other than through the narrow frame of the mandarins. There is nothing about how political parties have been hollowed out, their political culture impoverished, their membership aging. There is nothing about declining political participation, or the trivialisation of political ideologies. He also idealises the relationship between civil servants and politicians. It was often effective, but big ideological changes had to be wrested from stick in the mud traditionalists who ran the civil service.

Foster highlights how basic elements of common sense and good management have been lost. In simple, direct language he defends basic elements of competent governance against faddish obscurantism. The dull administrative competence of the British Civil Service has gone. Foster’s desire to inject some good old fashioned common sense is naïve, reflecting his misdiagnosis of the cause of the crisis. But his detailed discussion is rewarding, and the questions he raises are to the point.