The End of Politics: New Labour and the folly of managerialism

a book by Chris Dillow (£10.99 at Amazon.co.uk) was reviewed on the The Adam Smith Institute Blog at the beginning of June.


New Labour's distinctive idea is that equality and efficiency are partners, not enemies. But that's just managerialist ideology - the belief that trade-offs between conflicting values can be managed away. They can't. New Labour's main economic policies - tax credits, the minimum wage, expanding higher education and macroeconomic stability - have not removed the trade-off between equality and efficiency. But the managerialists have deeper flaws. They fail to recognize the multiple and conflicting meanings of equality and efficiency. And they assume that governments have knowledge and rationality that in fact nobody has.

So, says 'stumbling and mumbling' blogger Chris Dillow, let's scrap managerialism and replace it with genuine policies: ditch the idea that politicians can manage away social problems, and instead have a proper debate about conflicting ideals.


Hazel's comment:
In line with the current inability of "people" to read long texts I have not even seen this book let alone read it. Is efficient equality possible? I really don't know -- what I do know is that it's not just a New Labour administration that has failed to achieve equality. Maybe some pigs are always more equal than others. As for efficiency in government it seems to me that if only the politicians would leave things alone for a while without continual change then we might see improvements in efficiency.