The British public hold its governments and politicians in poor regard. Turnout in elections, membership of political parties and the readership and audience for the political news are all at historic lows. Surveys place MPs alongside estate agents and tabloid journalists as the least trusted occupations. People increasingly think of government and the political process as part of the problem, not the solution. A high profile leaflet ‘Working Together for a Stronger NHS’ contained numerous misleading, out-of-date or incorrect figures. representation in general elections, out of naked self-interest. The principal justification that they and a

In the featured case studies all this is frequently made worse by “operational disconnect”. “No feature of the blunders we have studied”, say the authors, “stands out more prominently than the divorce between those who make policies and those charged with implementing them...Most of the policy makers responsible for the blunders...assumed they had done the hard bit when they had decided what Government policy should be. Clearly they were wrong.” If you are reading this in HMRC, DWP or any other big operational department, you are probably already cheering the authors on. However, what seems to me likely, having read this book, is that somewhere in Government right now – maybe in several places – a blunder is brewing, despite the great efforts being made to minimise blunders through initiatives like the Major Projects Authority and the Implementation Unit. It is likely to be the result of well intentioned policy objectives being disconnected from operational reality, driven forward by activist Ministers working with a like- minded group which fails to get or hear the advice they need. The problem is that we won’t know where the blunder is, until it comes blinking into the light; then we will all say, once more, ‘How on earth could they let that happen?!’. In Britain, politicians and senior officials are also disparaged for the simple reason that our governments get things wrong, sometimes very badly wrong. They blunder, probably increasingly, probably on a greater scale than at least some comparable countries, and certainly unnecessarily and too often. Anthony King and I have completed a study of major government blunders committed by the UK government between 1980 and 2010 to see if there is a pattern that explains these missteps. What is a blunder?

Unsurprisingly, The Blunders of Our Governments starts with Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax. As the authors wryly remark: “We might be tempted to call it the blunder to end all blunders – except that far from ending all blunders, it has to be followed by numerous others.” Her attempt to introduce a new flat-rate local tax based on capitation rather than property values came close to bringing revolution to Britain’s streets. It was poorly designed, blatantly unfair (the dustman was asked to pay the same as the duke) and wasted countless billions. Follow this link to access a longer and deeper discussion of the issues around speaking truth to power. Or Failing to ? The bills in most cases were rushed through, with little time afforded either for substantive debate or for detailed scrutiny of individual clauses. The few voices raised in opposition were largely ignored. Indeed, a notable feature of the whole list of blunders was the inevitability with which the opposition parties would object to the policies on grounds of principle, but the rarity with which they argued that they would fail in their objectives (the single exception being the mis-selling of pensions). The official opposition parties played no effective part in any of the proceedings. Structural causes: (2) the deficit of accountability Now for the problem. One of the points made by the authors and the book's reviewers is that despite the quality of 'post-mortem's, blunders recur. This is worrying!

It is perhaps a tribute to the balanced nature of their analysis that King and Crewe’s opus will appeal to a wide spectrum of political opinion (and its quite a good marketing ploy too). the Poll Tax that cost the country millions, caused riots and helped to bring down a Prime Minister; It became clear, in early 2012, that a number of departments had arranged to pay certain senior individuals via the individuals' own limited companies. These individuals were not, strictly speaking, senior civil servants as they had not gone through the normal recruitment process, but they worked alongside and were pretty much treated as though they were civil servants. The main motivations behind these devices were (a) to enable the departments to pay the market rate for the job - not the constrained pay of the senior civil service, (b) to enable the individual to avoid income tax and national insurance contributions, and (c) to enable the departments to enter into fixed term contracts with their staff, thus avoiding the danger of unfair dismissal claims if/when the appointments came to an end. Needless to say, there was considerable criticism of departments willingness to enter into artificial arrangements so as to avoid the government's own pay restraint, tax and employment law legislation.Britain’s joining of, and subsequent undignified and extremely costly exit from, the European Exchange Rate mechanism (precursor of the Euro); Some will quarrel with the authors’ allocation of responsibility between human frailty and systemic weaknesses, and between politicians and civil servants. For me, the big omission is a chapter devoted to the Treasury – a self-regarding Whitehall institution that has swaggered from costly blunder to blunder over successive decades. Down the tubes – how the then deputy PM and Chancellor managed to screw-up the private finance deal for London Underground;