Hello, what’s this I see before me? A blank page; and a pen unencumbered by the heavy weight of BBC News impartiality. I still present University Challenge, it’s true; but having left the Today programme, perhaps I can now asseverate opinions that a fortnight ago would have got me sacked. This feels good! Here goes…
Dominic Cummings was right. I’m referring, obviously, to a speech he gave to the IPPR in 2014. It’s on YouTube and, being something of a weirdo and misfit, I have watched it a dozen times at least. His peroration can be distilled to three propositions: first, the trouble with Britain is that whoever is elected, the system (aka the civil service) always wins; second, the system is utterly, hopelessly unequal to the demands of our era; third, the people who do get things done are entrepreneurs and scientists, with their bias toward action, rather than members of the system, with their bias toward process. Is he wrong? Andy Burnham’s cabinet seem to agree. Perhaps they suddenly descry what, in a different context, the editor of this publication called the Blob.
The central challenge of our age is the gap between what the people need and what politics delivers. We really have replaced the rule of law with the rule of lawyers. Many of the big projects that threaten to emancipate us from the vortex of decline – HS2, the Lower Thames Gateway – become bywords for incompetence. We haven’t built a city for 60 years or a reservoir for 35. Pre-Budget chatter – ‘limited fiscal headroom’, ‘tough choices’ – is farcically myopic. On Today, for years I’ve been screaming inside, wanting to say: ‘Guys! We are about to get a century of change in a decade. Our country has been stagnant for 20 years. The post-1945 order has collapsed. AI offers thrilling promise, and peril. Get real!’ Now that I’m on YouTube, I guess I can say it, and will.
