David Cameron is planning a government of GOATS and Dragons

Wednesday, 25th November 2009

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics

There is one promise that David Cameron makes regularly that even the shadow Cabinet doesn’t believe he intends to keep: that he is going to end the era of ‘sofa government’ and bring back ‘Cabinet government’. Their experience over the past four years has taught them that real power in the Cameron Tory party rests not in the shadow Cabinet room but in the suite of offices that Cameron, George Osborne and their advisers inhabit. Rather than bringing back Cabinet government, Cameron intends to bring in a whole new style of government.

The Tory command chain has Mr Cameron at the top, and those who work within a ten-metre radius of him below. Shadow Cabinet meetings are where the various Tory spokesmen are briefed rather than consulted; the leadership talks of ‘giving’ shadow ministers policy. The closer the party gets to power, the less interest there seems to be in the opinions of the front bench. ‘If they don’t consult us in opposition, then why would they do it in government?’ one shadow Cabinet member said to me this week.

For years the Tories used to idealise the Whitehall system they left behind in May 1997. They blamed all of Whitehall’s problems on New Labour’s politicisation of the Civil Service, the proliferation of special advisers, and Tony Blair’s notorious meetings on the sofa where no minutes were kept. They imagined that when those with blue rosettes were again carrying the red boxes then there would be a return to order. But now that the Tories are faced with the prospect of actually running the country, they have come to accept that the current model is ill-suited to dealing with problems that cut across more than one department and that inter-departmental rivalries all too often obstruct good policy. So fierce are the turf wars between departments that Jack Straw and Ed Balls almost came to blows in a dispute over which department was in charge of what.

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