Jock Bytes: David Cameron II

Long shadows

Dear David

I promised you proposals for Action this day.

A year ago you, George and the team understood the proven wisdom:

You have to save yourself into survival: you cannot save yourself into prosperity.

But you have both overestimated and underestimated your power. You believed that the “first class government machine” would do what you told it to do. You were wrong. Your savings agenda has been hijacked. You have been shafted. It isn’t a machine with precision control levers. It is a vast overgrown jungle, in which the law of the jungle rules.

You were warned on 27 March 2011:

Meanwhile the real Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, David and Nick, are failing to lead by example. Whitehall mandarins have increased their numbers and powers since last May. Some local authority leaders are designing and planting Taliban style I.E.D’s timed to explode in the summer and the autumn. They cut lollipop ladies on £70 a week, preserve Directors on £2000 a week and appoint Special Advisers on £4000 a week.

Lollipop Ladies on £70 a week have gone in droves. The annual saving is minute: the resulting operational and social mayhem was clearly intended.

Earlier, I had obtained advice from my reliable Welsh source with the rules for you to follow. I passed them to you on 22 March:

Rule 1. Think of the problem as gardening rather than engineering............... Spanner and micrometer are useless. Get to work with pickaxe, spade and chainsaw.

Rule 2. Find some things that everyone dislikes. Old trees and shrubs, that have been there forever, that produce little............. Cut them down root and branch; burn them. Let in light and energy.

There is, at least, one such rotten tree. Old fogeys have been propping it up and calling it new names for nearly a thousand years..........................

Everyone will cheer. But, more important, everyone will recognise that you are serious and that you know what you are doing.

Your own office and the Cabinet Room table is, in reality, the only part of the machine (or overgrown garden) of State that you directly control. So the big rule is:

Rule 3. Lead by example. Cut the top payroll. One Prime Minister, plus four Secretaries of State and a Chancellor is enough. You then need “up and comer”, Ministers, two for your office and twenty five spread between the others. Thirty three in total is a big enough political team to run anything.

You can then look everyone, politicians, councillors, generals, administrators, permanent secretaries, in the eye and require them to follow your lead. Cut deeply at the top; cut lightly at the grassroots.

Be seen to lead.

Rule 4. Make no exceptions. (N.B. Recently applied cuts of around 40% in payments to charities undertaking sub-contract work for councils are wrong. The cut should be either 100% under rule 2, or around 5% under rule 3. You have been walked onto an I.E.D.)

Only by dramatic action and example can you start to change the culture. Your actions will generate respect, admiration, terror and imitation in equal measures.

We all want and recognise a good leader. Once again Prime Minister your country needs:

Action this day.

Paws4Now

Jock