A.O.B.
In George's Hands?
Published: 10 September 2008
It’s time to talk to George, we cautioned chief executives and their senior colleagues in this space at the beginning of July.
We reasoned that since nobody much was talking to the Shadow Chancellor and his team yet, the Government was looking shakier by the moment, so now was a good time to make your number with the Tories and to give them the benefit of the experience George Osborne and his team do not have.
Well, we’re not unused to having our advice heeded. How gratifying, however, to have evidence from an unusual quarter.
Step forward Polly Toynbee, Guardian columnist and for years the standard-bearer of all things New Labour. In the course of a vitriolic attack on ‘the smell of death’ about the Government and ‘ineptitude’ of Gordon Brown, she makes an interesting observation.
It is that ‘already at conferences the lobby groups and voluntary organisations hang on every word of shadow ministers, yawning through mere ministers on their way out’.
In drawing attention to the disarray of the Brown government we do not mean to be party-political.
The Prime Minister’s most vociferous critics are his fellow Labour Party and Trade Union members. Labour MPs would speak up more, but would prefer to stay in a cushy job to June 2010, the last date until which a General Election can be delayed. So what now?
Certain chief and senior executives would now be well advised to do more than talk to George. They should start reviewing and raising their personal profiles because they, too, are likely to be out of a job either side of 2010.
Which chief and senior executives, for example?
Well, the Regional Development Agencies are shaping up quite nicely as candidates for pruning. Then there’s the Regional Assemblies: Gordon Brown said he would do away with them by 2010.
If Mr Brown fails or is otherwise unable to deliver this pledge, Regional Assemblies are unlikely to be any safer than the RDAs in the hands of George Osborne.
Ross Davies is a partner in The Governance Partnership.