Fishburn Hedges

20.04.2011

It’s wonderful when you read a single insight and it helps you understand why in so many areas the Coalition is struggling to implement its policies.

I offer four:

The tuition fees: the government cannot afford the number of universities that want to set the maximum fee. But apart from the obvious desire to maximise their income, this is about branding, about positioning and prestige: every university wants to be Waitrose; no-one Tesco.  “A lot cheaper than Oxford” is hardly a compelling sales pitch.

The intervention in Libya: the decent dictators go quietly (Tunisia, Egypt); the absolute ones hang on for as long as they can using everything at their disposal (Libya and take your pick from the rest of the Middle East).  So it’s no surprise regime change becomes an overt part of the equation, days drag into weeks and we end up effectively taking sides.  Is this another Vietnam?  Possibly not, but it may be another Yugoslavia.

New localism: a traditional first term commitment being driven hard by the Coalition, but as soon as councils do anything the government does not like, such as cutting grants to local charities, Eric Pickles gets the hump and threatens all sorts of central directives.      

Social mobility: good in theory, but the problem is, there’s no room at the top: people say the grammar schools in their pomp provided a step up for a whole generation of bright ambitious working class lads and lasses; the truth is, it coincided with a one-off boom in white collar jobs in the 50’s and 60’s.  There was room at the top then.  But no more.  And the 60’s generation don’t want to see their well and often expensively educated children held back to allow more mobility, now it’s a system of one in, one out.  It will be sharp elbows at dawn for some time to come. 

The coalition is struggling to get traction with all of these initiatives.  Yet the outcome and reactions should surprise no-one.  They call it the law of unintended consequences and it has unravelled policy making for generations.  But unexpected?  I think not.

Posted by John Williams