Leviathan

IS THE coalition history already? Your blogger sat in a traffic jam on Saturday, listening to Five Days in May, the Radio 4 drama about the formation of the government in May last year. It stuck painstakingly close to the record of events, yet not even the most avid follower of that strange interim, when Liberal Democrats, Tories and Labour divided up power in midnight meetings and secret trysts, could say the cast passed the credibility test. Portraying politicians is a curiously hard business, even for accomplished  actors. David Cameron, inhabited by Sam West sounded older and (even) smugger than the real version. Nicholas Boulton as Nick Clegg was more like an irrascible insurance broker, than eager-beaver Nick. As for poor old Gordon Brown, well, he may be thoroughly out of fashion (and out of the IMF running), but he was rendered here more like a rough Clydesider than an educated Scot. Is there really such a dearth of posh Scottish actors for occasions like this? 

Five Days did at least recognize that policies, as well as personality clashes, matter in the formation of coalitions, with the parties forced to dig down into which of thei commitments are worth defending, and which are tradeable commodities. Did the Liberal Democrats miss their chance of the long-awaited, centre-left progressive alliance in a dash for power alongside Mr Cameron? Or did Dave's skilful manoeuvering and Mr Clegg's flexibility create a new apporach to policy-making outside the usual left-right constraints? You can catch the play for the next few days on i-player and decide for yourself. Leviathan is still trying to work out who might have played the main characacters with more oomph. Your nominations please. Still, there's always John Sessions as the pugnancious Ed Balls to cheer us up. 

A BIG night out for Leviathan this week, listening to Francis Fukuyama talk about his new book, "The Origins of Political Order". The "End of History" man now seems very far from persuaded about one key aspect of his earlier thesis, admitting that he now believes that the power of ideas was heavily tempered by sociology and geography when it came to determining which states developed successfully as liberal democracies and which did not. Sociologists and geographers might feel that they were trying to tell him this earlier. No matter, Fukuyama remains one of the great public intellectuals, who has the breadth—and the nerve—to range across subjects from the Qin dynasty to power structures in African tribes and British canon law in his survey of political institutions from pre-human times to the French revolution.

The stand-out moment was his analysis of the role of the eunuchs, who provided information, support and absolute loyalty to Chinese emperors against officials. Neither distracted nor corrupted by the desire to pass wealth and influence onto their offspring, he said, “They played a critical role in allowing Chinese emperors to bypass the strong and autonomous bureaucracy, but in turn began developing corporate interests of their own." By 160AD they had begun to acquire tax-exemptions and titles, which prompted a eunuch-cull—and the end of all the reflected glory.

Asked how he viewed Nick Clegg's crusade to break down modern nepotism by demanding that companies open up their internships to applicants, rather than insiders' contacts, Mr Fukuyama was in favour but not especially hopeful that personal networks could be so easily outwitted. If the eunuchs somehow managed to play the system until the Confucians caught up with them, modern parents armed with the ferocity of kinship and a BlackBerry full of FTSE company contact numbers may be an even more formidable force.

WILL Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, survive his own radical reforms? He is on the end of an unsoothing intervention today by the chief of the British Medical Association, Hamish Meldrum, who thinks that the health secretary's credibility will be damaged beyond repair if the NHS bill is substantially watered down.

That is certainly the feeling at Westminster and a subdued Mr Lansley frankly does not look like a man fighting bravely for his political life. The decision to press pause on reforms means that there is little he can say publicly, without falling foul of David Cameron's diktat, that this is the time to reflect—and by implication, reconsider the sweeping plans for change. Number 10 sources say the impact on quality and potential conflict of interest in making family doctors the main guardians of budgets are uppermost in their minds.

The Department of Health itself is unnerved—and momentum behind health reform has all but evaporated. Mr Cameron won't want this to go on too long. His preference is to leave the cabinet unshufflled for now, though the intended return of David Laws could change that. Mr Laws, a tough reformer by instinct, might well inherit Mr Lansley's post. Downside: that would drive leftwing Liberal Democrats even deeper into opposition against the coalition. 

An alternative Tory contender is Jeremy Hunt, who is about to finish dealing with the niceties of Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB takeover. Mr Hunt has a lean and hungry look and performed well in a firefight Question Time discussion on the NHS. Wanted: an alternative secretary of state. Must bring own body armour.

HOW serious are the intended changes to health reforms? There has been much sound and even more fury, but the noise so far stops short of a major reversal. In the Commons this afternoon, Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, spoke of a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to put the health service on a sustainable basis". Grand words, but Mr Lansley, far from heralding a generational shift, looks exhausted and is feeling the pressure of a series of media briefings which suggested that he is not good at selling his health reforms to the public. That is often code for not selling them well to the media but, either way, it's not good.

One of the oddest things about the NHS uprising is that it features many people who must surely have known that the intentions of the Conservatives—more space for private providers and greater responsibility for GPs in commissioning services and overseeing their budgets—were laid out in the manifesto. The political problem is that the party had no intention of flagging up its plans during a campaign intended to exude reassurance on health care. An upheaval that comes as surprise is worse than one prepared for.

The timing of the intervention by a former health secretary, Stephen Dorrell, before the health select committee report is significant. Mr Dorrell has long made concerned noises about the reforms, without being precise about what he thinks is wrong with them. As chair of the health select committee he has more intimate knowledge than most MPs of the plans. He believes the current proposals endanger the principle that NHS should be responsive to patients’ needs. David Cameron is planning a relaunch, the better to explain that the improved service will be more responsive.

The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile,  have focused their concerns on "accountability”. But that is very different from the accusation of consensus-busting about the nature of the NHS. Other critics on the left and Lord Tebbit (not common bedfellows) have objected more specifically to the "cherry picking" expansion of services that private healthcare providers would be able to carry out, using staff trained by the NHS. Then add in the grassroots complaints about forcing primary care trusts to become GP consortia.

That adds up to at least four different complaints about Mr Lansley’s programme. It is doubtful, however noisy the opposition, that the coalition will want to retreat on all of these. But the longer they let the impression of chaos on all fronts mount, while failing to defend an embattled health secretary, the worse this will get. If Mr Cameron wants a partial U-turn, as all the evidence suggests, he should quickly make clear what he wants to ditch and what he is determined to keep. That’s the leader's job, when the red light flashes in the emergency room.

TWO stories in the newspaper this week demonstrate the potential pitfalls of the government’s public services reforms, in the run up to the coalition’s ambitious White Paper on the subject, about to be unleashed on Whitehall. They might be summarized under the old Jewish joke about an unsatisfactory dining experience: "Such bad food—and such small portions."

The first is the parental Golgotha of National Offers Day, when pupils find out which secondary school they have been allocated a place at from September. In the most competitive parts of the capital (which also contain some of the most competitive parents), the number of pupils getting their first choice is as low as 60%. That makes for a lot of dissatisfied educational customers—of precisely the sort the Conservatives targeted to gain support for their Free School reforms.

But the number of such schools planned to open in September is currently predicted to be around 12. Only 8 have formal go-ahead so far. It’s true, this is early days and local planning hurdles and lack of readily available school sites are constraining the pace of the Free School scheme's advance. But the government will soon come under pressure to show that its ideological attachment to the project can deliver a sizeable number of places in the kind of rigorous school many parents want and cannot find in the state sector. If it can’t, Free Schools will seem to many like a nice idea: just not one relevant to their needs.

Now take the other full-frontal attack on Leviathan: NHS reform and specifically the pledge to let GPs commission care directly. It is intended to cut down bureaucracy but the British Medical Association complained this week that an outfit entitled the NHS Commissioning Board, which will oversee spending, would end up back in control of what consortia can and cannot do under their own steam.

Simon Burns, the health minister, argues with this interpretation, but it would not be the first time an advance in freeing services from political control ended up back under the control of officialdom. Still, it’s an irony that the BMA, which has never shown a robust appetite for reform, should now appear worried about the changes not being radical enough. Perhaps they're concerned about the portions.

WHETHER they're believers in the Big Society or just dedicated deficit-slashers, members of the British government are sounding rather more worried this week about the backlash their plans to cut public spending has provoked. From Liberal Democrat councillors declaring their anomosity to the reforms (inconveniently for Nick Clegg as he defends his volte-face on tuition fees), to Dame Elizabeth Hoodless's warning of the dangers to the charitable and voluntary sectors, a policy intended to galvanise localities and push decision-making away from the centre is instead causing problems to pile up on the government's doorstep. 

It needs a clearer strategy and a better approach to dealing the backlash. David Cameron is not the only leader to find public-sector reform to be one of the most labour-intensive and emotive activities to manage. Germany's former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder admitted in his memoirs that the backlash to the Hartz reforms wore him down. Tony Blair spoke of "scars on my back" from his own attempts to reform the state. Mr Cameron cannnot for ever remain above the fray.

As a student of recent Tory political history, he is well aware of the mismanagement of the poll tax under Margaret Thatcher. A measure intended to make local councils more accountable ended up triggering a powerful counterattack on central government, resulting in the shredding of her authority. That is why tensions over the Big Society (which we discuss in detail in this week's issue) are so potent. Too much emphasis on Big Society localism, instigated alongside the cuts, could result in Mr Cameron being seen as the Number 10 slasher. Too little, and his vision of a less mighty state, supplemented by more individual and voluntary associations, will falter. So far the tone of this argument has been polite. That won't last.

Should the government step in, for instance, if council chiefs cut services for disabled children, while hanging onto highly paid officials? Some proponents of the Big Society, such as the social entrepreneur Danny Kruger, think it should insist that front-line cuts are matched by personnel reductions. So far though, Mr Cameron's team is loth to put Whitehall's boot into councils whose cuts may be motivated more by politics, and a desire to make the government look bad, than a sincere effort to cut costs. But how long can they hold out without stepping up the fight?