Blair's Going--First Thoughts
He has taken a long time to announce his going and now he has said when. The media will be full of an analysis of his "legacy" and how he has changed Britain. Probably not at all in reality, the vanity of politicians to think they change things is not surprising but much overated. Most ride the feelings of the time, Thatcher in apparent opposition to the sixties and Blair to Thatcherism. They had the wind with them and both claimed to be "conviction" politicians.
Blair has done some good things, the most recent is in Northern Ireland and that has taken all of his ten years and about five of John Major's. Devolution and electoral reform and the reform of the House of Lords. Seriosly trying to do something abut child poverty and increasing funding into both education and housing. Perhaps the decision with the most long-term impact is the Bill of Rights and Freedom of Information, though sometimes I think they regret them, and one should not forget civil partnerships.
This always sounds good when one compares the idea of a "conviction" politician to one who merely wants power for their own selfish ends. However the problem with conviction politicians is what happens when their convictions are wrong., I am sure many members of the BNP are convinced of their beliefs. So if we really want to examine Blair's legacy, which it is much too sonn to do, one has to look at his convictions and then examine how succesfully he has implemented them. The problem is that his convictions are not that clear to me. In a famous speech when asked what his priorities were he said "Education, education and education". But was that just a sound bite or was that his conviction.
Again he has reiterated his belief in "choice" and certainly Anthony Giddens has tried to explain why it should work and I thought have written an earlier one on this but can't find it now! But was this part of Blair's conviction or just a way to persuade the middle classes to vote for him. Tell that they have choice in the public sector and they will not buy their way out! The problem is that it doesn't make sense and is almost cetainly not possible to implement it. There I think lies the problem of Blair, not that many of his goals are not admirable but that he has no coherent programme to implement them.
He seems to have no time or patience with the process of implementation and seems to want everything to happen now. This seems to be part of the review by those close to him, that they didn't reform things quickly enough and in some sense that might be true. But Blair and those close to him had spent, or so it appears, little time thinking about implementation and so had no idea how to make things work. One of the first acts in education was to do away with grant maintained schools but then in the next term of office they reintroduced them as academies. This looks very much like the man is for turning, even has a reverse gear. Here we see at it's worst the problem of conviction politicians, the only evidence which is taken seriously is that which supports the decision to impose Academies and ignore the critical evidence. Here choice has had a corrosive effect on education and schools because the choice is not for parents but for popular schools and so we get schools reinforcing their popularity by selecting pupils who will improve their popularity ratings. In the first term this whole process was exaggerated by hanging on the Chris Woodhead against all sensible advice which managed to antogonise the teachers.
This is the greatest weakness of Blair and many politicains who have no expertise in managing, especially professionals. The delivery of any improvements in public service will come from those providing it and especially from those on the front line. If they are just presented with reforms they may not deliver them with the enthusiasm that makes them work. This is not to deny that there is often a lot of conservatism amongst professionals which leads them to oppose change BUT that makes it much more important that time is taken to discuss, persaude and to bring on side the professionals. It will never be possible to bring all of those over to the reforms you want but you must take the time to listen and not just to hear. People delivering a service often do know what happens and might realise that some proposals will not work as you want them to.
When I have more energy the second part might follow!
Of course this idea is an anathema to many politicains as they want instant solutions to problems and immediate action on their political agenda, even if they have had no experience. The difficulty for educational professionals is that everyone went to school and so knows how to make it work better but very few have any practical experience of teaching. Some things which need to be done just take time and are boring, the devil is in the details, this is true in all areas of human endeavour, and it is true with reforms. It is not helped by the huge turn around of top politicians, John Ried has had nine jobs in ten years, that is just bad management
Blair has done some good things, the most recent is in Northern Ireland and that has taken all of his ten years and about five of John Major's. Devolution and electoral reform and the reform of the House of Lords. Seriosly trying to do something abut child poverty and increasing funding into both education and housing. Perhaps the decision with the most long-term impact is the Bill of Rights and Freedom of Information, though sometimes I think they regret them, and one should not forget civil partnerships.
This always sounds good when one compares the idea of a "conviction" politician to one who merely wants power for their own selfish ends. However the problem with conviction politicians is what happens when their convictions are wrong., I am sure many members of the BNP are convinced of their beliefs. So if we really want to examine Blair's legacy, which it is much too sonn to do, one has to look at his convictions and then examine how succesfully he has implemented them. The problem is that his convictions are not that clear to me. In a famous speech when asked what his priorities were he said "Education, education and education". But was that just a sound bite or was that his conviction.
Again he has reiterated his belief in "choice" and certainly Anthony Giddens has tried to explain why it should work and I thought have written an earlier one on this but can't find it now! But was this part of Blair's conviction or just a way to persuade the middle classes to vote for him. Tell that they have choice in the public sector and they will not buy their way out! The problem is that it doesn't make sense and is almost cetainly not possible to implement it. There I think lies the problem of Blair, not that many of his goals are not admirable but that he has no coherent programme to implement them.
He seems to have no time or patience with the process of implementation and seems to want everything to happen now. This seems to be part of the review by those close to him, that they didn't reform things quickly enough and in some sense that might be true. But Blair and those close to him had spent, or so it appears, little time thinking about implementation and so had no idea how to make things work. One of the first acts in education was to do away with grant maintained schools but then in the next term of office they reintroduced them as academies. This looks very much like the man is for turning, even has a reverse gear. Here we see at it's worst the problem of conviction politicians, the only evidence which is taken seriously is that which supports the decision to impose Academies and ignore the critical evidence. Here choice has had a corrosive effect on education and schools because the choice is not for parents but for popular schools and so we get schools reinforcing their popularity by selecting pupils who will improve their popularity ratings. In the first term this whole process was exaggerated by hanging on the Chris Woodhead against all sensible advice which managed to antogonise the teachers.
This is the greatest weakness of Blair and many politicains who have no expertise in managing, especially professionals. The delivery of any improvements in public service will come from those providing it and especially from those on the front line. If they are just presented with reforms they may not deliver them with the enthusiasm that makes them work. This is not to deny that there is often a lot of conservatism amongst professionals which leads them to oppose change BUT that makes it much more important that time is taken to discuss, persaude and to bring on side the professionals. It will never be possible to bring all of those over to the reforms you want but you must take the time to listen and not just to hear. People delivering a service often do know what happens and might realise that some proposals will not work as you want them to.
When I have more energy the second part might follow!
Of course this idea is an anathema to many politicains as they want instant solutions to problems and immediate action on their political agenda, even if they have had no experience. The difficulty for educational professionals is that everyone went to school and so knows how to make it work better but very few have any practical experience of teaching. Some things which need to be done just take time and are boring, the devil is in the details, this is true in all areas of human endeavour, and it is true with reforms. It is not helped by the huge turn around of top politicians, John Ried has had nine jobs in ten years, that is just bad management
Labels: politics
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