Ed Straw wants a Government that is measured by its results and where the cloud of spin is replaced by a new era of clarity
As the brother of Jack Straw and the chair of one of the leading think tanks of the New Labour era, Ed Straw has seen Government up close and argues it’s time for a revolution.
The former PwC director now lives at the foot of the Llanberis pass and is convinced that both Westminster and the Assembly would benefit from a form of Government driven by results and led by individuals who faced limits on how long they could hold the top job.
His new book, Stand & Deliver, warns that the present system is “bust” and held by a civil service that should be staffed by carefully hired specialists but is instead run by “dead” generalists.
Mr Straw, a former chair of the Demos think tank, said: “This is not a book that’s been written to make friends. Indeed, it’s quite the reverse.
“People within the system, one or two of them, have already expressed their hatred of it as it stands. Essentially, it says, ‘Look, you’re working in a completely bust system.’”
The book began as an investigation into why Labour lost the 2010 election, asking why ill-discipline broke out and “Why did Labour go into an election with a leader it knew couldn’t win?”.
He concluded major changes are needed to the way Government works so the success and failure of laws can be clearly and impartially measured. He suggests that alongside the legislature a “resulture” is needed – run out of the Lords – which would provide a league table of legislation.
He also argues that prime ministers and first minister should not hold office for more than six to eight years.
Mr Straw said: “The longer groups of people are in power the less accountability there is. They just become terribly pleased with themselves.
“This is not just people in cabinet. This is particularly the advisers and the whole sort of coterie that goes around them and you just find they take less and less advice from outside.”
In the worst cases, he said, you get “someone and his mate” making policy.
Mr Straw argues the Conservatives have a better system of registering backbench concerns and a more effective way of changing leaders than Labour.
With Labour, he said: “You have to call a party conference. Just to do that is a massive ask… You’re going to be washing an incredible of dirty linen in public. The chances are you may even stimulate a run on the pound.”
Instead of setting this process in motion, he said, efforts to remove a leader descend into “backstairs stuff”.
The 65-year-old said: “It’s just chaotic and therefore what you get is Brown-Blair indiscipline.”
He argues that when it came time for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to go they “should both have been taken round the back of the bicycle sheds and given a thorough talking-to by the backbenchers”.
Looking at the Welsh Government, he argues it has an opportunity to establish a results-focused culture.
He said: “It’s young and therefore it hasn’t had too much time to sink into a self-serving bureaucracy. It’s got some fresh people in it who have been trying to do the right things.”
Mr Straw added: “In Wales the last thing you want is a dead generalist civil service… I’m afraid it’s happening but don’t allow yourselves to be seduced by the Westminster civil service.”
Convinced that public support can be built for sweeping reform, he said: “Once you get outside Westminster and Whitehall there’s a huge appetite because everybody recognises the system of Government is bust, it doesn’t work.”
Stressing the importance for the country’s future, he said: “What the next system of Government is matters far, far more than who the next prime minister is.”
