Milburn: What’s it all about, Gordon?

29 March 2008

Alan Milburn gives his first interview since Brown became PM, and tells Fraser Nelson that Gordon has converted to Blairism too late. Something new is needed now

I put to him that that sounds mightily like the Thatcherite logic, the type of politics he campaigned against when he was a bearded student activist working in Days of Hope bookshop in Lancaster (nicknamed ‘Haze of Dope’ by its patrons). The bibliophilia has stayed with him and he traces the roots of his ideas to the co-operative socialism of Robert Owen, William Morris, R.H. Tawney and T.H. Green. So empowerment is Labour’s heritage, he says, and it is in danger of being stolen.

‘We cannot afford to allow the empowerment agenda to be hijacked by the Conservative party. It is naturally a Labour agenda, about addressing disadvantage and inequality and the uneven distribution of power in society.’ This is what Milton Friedman was writing about in the 1970s, I say. ‘It’s what Tony Crosland wrote about in the 1950s,’ he shoots back. ‘In the Future of Socialism he talked about empowering individuals. How, as society changed, socialism had to keep up — and if it didn’t, we’d get turfed out. And that is the issue for us today.’

Yet he’s fairly confident that the Conservatives are unable to break away from what he regards as a failed consensus. He cites Tory plans to transfer power to an NHS governing board, independent from government. ‘That would give power to the great and the good in the NHS,’ he groans. ‘The same great and the good who gave us the system we inherited in 1997. It puts the wrong people in charge. It concentrates power at the top, at the wrong level.’

He admits that, as health secretary, the language he used to sell reform made it a tougher battle with Labour MPs, whereas John Reid, his successor, sold it in class-war terms (‘Why should just the rich have choice?’). I put to him that he may fall into the same trap now, and that his speeches now about the post-Blair era may be seen as theorising, with little practical application. He face darkens. ‘This is not some sort of airy-fairy thing. It is about a real thing and that’s called power,’ he says.

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John Bull

March 28th, 2008 12:36pm Report this comment

The concept of reducing central government size in order to lower the levels of interference in our everyday lives is a good one.

The problem comes with the 'farming out' of 'Advisers to the Government'. Look simply at the current state - the friends and families of every MP and his dog are scrabbling frantically for the almost daily handouts of hugely funded government 'contracts' for which we already have more than sufficient 'In-House' expertise in our highly paid Civil Service.

The correct word for this is CORRUPTION.

Recognise it soon, for with the advent of the Federal State of the EU, it will soon be visible on every street corner in the land !

Platitudes no longer have any relevance. Action is called for.

Now !!!

Elizabeth Elliot-Pyle

March 28th, 2008 2:37pm Report this comment

It seems to me that almost everything that Millburn is advocating is current Conservative party policy. Perhaps he should consider crossing the floor of the house.

jon livesey

March 28th, 2008 8:29pm Report this comment

Milburn's real problem, as someone already said, is that he's in the wrong party.

Labour doesn't disempower the individual for a whim but for structural reasons. Labour only has two reasons for existence. One is its core belief that "experts" know more than individuals. Teachers know more than parents, nurses know more than patients, civil servants know more than taxpayers.

Labour's second reason for existence meshes with the first. Labour can reward its supporters with sinecures at taxpayer expense, and since its supporters know that, it is compelled to, with the result that we employ more and more experts who do less and less, because they are experts in name only. Yet Labour's basic strategy, that of rewarding its supporters, works, whether they work or not.

A "Milburn" Labour Party would be one that did not depend on sinecures and rotten boroughs to get elected, and which did not over-inflate the useless part of the Civil Service in office. But that wouldn't be the Labour Party at all; it would be the Tories.

David Lindsay

March 29th, 2008 12:28pm Report this comment

Who are you going to interview next? Are there any members of the Macmillan Cabinet left alive?

Paul Danon

March 31st, 2008 1:58pm Report this comment

The folks who will come forward to take part in local democracy are the sort with time on their hands and a meddlesome attitude. Better to find ways of delivering good public services than to tie it up in all sorts of committees of busybodies. Tesco's aren't good because they're run by customers but because they seek to serve customers

Nick Wilson

April 6th, 2008 6:26pm Report this comment

This article put me in mind of the Demos report, 'Making it Personal', about the success of personal budgets in the field of social care. This report by Charles Leadbeater and others makes clear that, by being in control of their own budgets, people are empowered to make different choices AND an average of 15% is saved to the public purse.
As a follow-up to the interview with Alan Milburn, you/he might like to consider whether the personalised budget model could help to achieve the downsizing of the government machine to which Alan Milburn referred.

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