The Blunders of Our Governments

by Anthony King, Ivor Crewe

blunder/ˈblʌndə(r)/, n., A gross mistake; an error due to stupidity or carelessness.

There are a handful of cock-ups that we remember all too well, from the poll tax to the Millennium Dome. However, the list is longer than most of us realize – and it’s growing. With unrivalled political savvy and a keen sense of irony, distinguished political scientists Anthony King and Ivor Crewe open our eyes to the worst government horror stories and explain why the British political system is quite so prone to appalling mistakes. You will discover

• The government wasted up to £20 billion pounds in a failed scheme to update London’s Underground system.

• Tens of thousands of single mothers were left in poverty without financial support from absent fathers.

• Tony Blair committed the NHS to the biggest civilian IT project the world has ever seen, despite knowing next to nothing about computing.

• The Assets Recovery Agency cost far more to run than it ever clawed back from the proceeds of organised crime.

• The Coalition government is at least as blunder-prone as any of its predecessors.

Groupthink, constantly rotating ministers and a weak parliament all contribute to wasted billions and illogical policy. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. Informed by years of research and interviews with senior cabinet ministers and civil servants, this razor-sharp diagnosis of flawed government is required reading for every UK citizen. With its spirited prescriptions for more fool-proof policymaking, it will prove to be one of the most important political books of the decade.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Government, Business, British Literature, Current Affairs

512 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 19, 2013

About the author

Anthony King was a Millennium Professor of British Government at the University of Essex. He broadcasted frequently on politics and elections for the BBC and wrote on the same subjects for the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Observer.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some Chinese tourists on the radio the other day, they’d come to London and they were expressing their surprise at what they saw – blue sky! They were fully expecting London to be wreathed in Dickensian fog. Yes, this antique image is still alive and well. But people, the London pea-souper was eradicated in 1956!! That was when parliament passed the Clean Air Act which created urban zones where only smokeless fuel could be burnt. This was a great success – many people were thus saved from fatal asthma attacks, and many robbers could now be easily spotted by the coppers.

This book begins with a list of swinging successes by the British government (I should mention that this book is 100% concerned with Britain) and the Clean Air Act is one. Others include the establishment of the National Health Service, the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 which stopped urban sprawl and preserved the much loved character of the English countryside which you can see in Downton Abbey,




the Road Safety Act 1967 which introduced the breathalyser to test for drunk driving :

The official forecast of lives likely to be saved was two hundred a year. At the end of the first five months, 800 people were alive who statistically would have died without the breathalyser.

followed by compulsory seat belt wearing in 1983. The authors also list the introduction of decimal currency in 1971 as being so seamlessly done that it wasn’t newsworthy; and the introduction of a national minimum wage in 1999 (in the teeth of conservatives predicting mass unemployment - no such thing happened).

So the authors are not writing a book to prove that government consists of one ghastly blunder after another. They aren’t anti-government.

A useful definition :

Policy wonk : a person interested in the technical detail of political policies

An admission :

I thought this book would be for the politically interested average citizen but it’s probably for policy wonks. At least 50% of it was way too detailed and technical for me. I was Skippy the Bush Kangaroo for much of this book.



My political involvement is mostly on the level of yelling at the tv these days. My former activism I tend to look on with a shudder.

So lets take one single example of huge government blunder and that will stand for the many discussed here.

The Child Support Agency

The Problem :

Between 1970 and the early 1990s the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers in the UK trebled from roughly 10% to roughly 30%... some unmarried mothers were in stable partnerships, but a majority were not; and even some of the mothers in stable partnerships were no longer partnered by their children’s father.

Less than a quarter of the absent fathers were paying maintenance for their kids. The unmarried mothers were all claiming welfare. Politicians led the entire country in an angry chorus of disapproval – these feckless fathers were taking us all for a ride. Something must be done to force them to shoulder their responsibilities!

Hence the Child Support Agency, which was set up in 1993 to track down the fathers and force them to pay up.

Chaos then ensued.

After one year of operating, parliament commissioned an inquiry, which discovered:

The assessments (of the father’s income) were frequently based on grossly inadequate information, that requests for maintenance were often sent to the wrong individual, that wrongly addressed requests for payment, not surprisingly, inflicted strain on marriages, that maintenance payments were paid into the wrong account and could not be retrieved, that letters went unanswered for months, that breaches of confidentiality were common, that it was impossible for individuals to find out anything about the progress of their case and that CSA staff frequently misinformed both absent fathers and lone mothers about the consequences that would follow if they failed to co-operate.

One of the reasons for this car-crash was that the politicians and civil servants who wrote the rules for the Child Support Agency had no conception of the lives of the people it was going to dramatically affect.

Ministers and officials were accustomed to a world in which couples that split up then went on to form one new family each or perhaps none. They were totally unfamiliar with a world in which fathers often had multiple children by multiple mothers, and mothers often had multiple children by multiple fathers (not all of whom they were able to identify). Once senior policymaker admitted… “We hadn’t appreciated that very large numbers of people, both women and men, now lead very complicated lives.”

In many cases, even if they did track down an absent father, he turned out to be unemployed or on very low wages, and simply could not afford to pay anything. Not only that, but

Some could see no reason why they should provide maintenance for children to whom they had been granted little or no access.

And

Many an absent father was convinced that the mother of his child was now living with a man who earned far more than he did.

In 2006 the CSA was abolished to a chorus of ironic cheers.

This is a splendid book for the even geekier older brother I never had.

[Geevee · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to be reminded of some of the government blunders from the last 40 years this is a good book for you.

The authors won't just remind you though they will provide measured and well researched insight into not only bills, initiatives and taxes that went bad but also offer views on patterns and behaviours of decision making (or not), and why the British government system makes howlers that not only cost taxpayers fortunes but in some case people's lives.

Flowing, well paced and informative a solid 3.5.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blundering Around Whitehall

The Blunders our Governments make by the respected political professors and commentators Ivor Crewe and Anthony King is a non-partisan look at the mistakes that all governments make in the course of history. Sometimes in the face of fierce opposition they still make the mistakes most politicians like to quietly disown while the opposition party likes to remind them of.

It is not all bad as Crewe and King explain what they view as a Blunder and not all of them come from knee-jerk reactions to the press. The book starts with some of the successes of Government, and sometimes things that governments ought to be proud to boast of but forgotten about. A case in point being Margaret Thatcher, often accused of having no industrial policy other than close things down, through the strength of a meeting with a Japanese Company in the 1980s brought inward investment to the North East of England from the Nissan Car Company who to this day still invest heavily in car manufacturing in the region. Thatcher in her own autobiography should be proud of this achievement but it only gets a mention in passing of no more than a sentence. King and Crewe show that all governments since 1945 have done some good and some bad as unintended consequences of policy proposals, such as the Town & Country Act a success but not recognised or the disaster that was Energy Minister Manny Shinwell who was warned there would be fuel shortages and did absolutely nothing to prepare for it. But I could point to many more disasters Shinwell created. Or that the Labour Party should be proud of its manifesto promise of a minimum wage and its implementation with the then Tory leader in 2005 admitting they were wrong to oppose it.

There is also a mention of Sir Keith Joseph the Conservative Party’s guiding light on the free market and policies when he asked a Conservative voter who lived in the USA what he missed about the UK, he was taken aback that he said the BBC and NHS the two things that were very much government led via the Treasury. If asked that question now I am sure he would say something different about the BBC, especially with their attitude to spending our money. Not like the BBC would give overpaid managers massive payoffs at our expense or employ a former MP with no experience of technology implementation in charge if technology at the BBC, oh wait hang on!

All the old favourites are here such as the tax that has always led to riots and it did in 1990 to with riots in Trafalgar Square yes The Poll Tax is there! Guiding you through that the likes of Chancellor Nigel Lawson saw it as nothing more than a fool’s errand that would cost more politically and financially while Michael Heseltine had dismissed the proposals in the early 80s as unworkable. Even the architects of the scheme Kenneth Baker and William Waldergrave had misgiving by the time of implementation as things had changed during the course and were being led blindly by Margaret Thatcher and Nicholas Ridley. They also ask where on earth were Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition Party was at this time, on one of its naval-gazing exercises of the late 1980s as it happens, yes Hatton and Militant Tendency were still active causing the leadership to take their eye off the ball at that time.

This book guides us through some wonderful blunders, some we are clearly aware of now but were ignorant at the time. Or those blunders we could also see happening but the Honourable Members of Her Majesty’s Government know better! Reminds me of the current and previous Government and their lust for HS2, which will be expensive with out of date trains and technology before a line is laid. We can see this as what it is a massive vanity project that we the public taxpayers do not want but some moronic politician knows better than us and hey it is only money, our tax money!

Through this book we are reminded of some blunders that happened even while opposition MPs spoke up and warned them of unintended consequences, please step up Michael Meacher, Margaret Beckett and Frank Haynes who all shouted that pension mis-selling would happen as an unintended consequence to changes in Pension Legislation. I will not point out who was right but I believe the mis-selling is costing us a few billion, easy money its only tax cash.

They also point to the failings of the Labour Years and their expensive blunders, Individual Learning Accounts anyone? Do not worry there is all ways the Asset Recovery Agency where assets remained unrecovered, or a favourite of the Treasury’s the more expensive tax credits and debits. My favourite is the implementation of IT across Whitehall, and the technophobe Tony Blair who implementated one of the biggest rollouts of IT which still gives the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office enough work to last another life time.

There is also honourable mentions for the famed massively expensive rip off of tax money the Public Private Partnerships and the one that does get highlighted is one forgotten by most of the UK shall we mention “Metronet” leave it at that and invite you to read more about it in the chapter, Down the tubes.

This wonderful book covers all the reasons as to why blunders happen, whether it is due to the constant change of Ministers, or the lack of accountability to Parliament. How sometimes Ministers of all political shades act more like activists than leaders of a government department. Let’s not forget how the press can assist in the blunders of our political leaders by generating panic, picking symbols of this panic and spinning it out of control.

The Blunders of our Government is the best summary from a non-partisan view of the mistakes all governments have made usually with the best of intentions. Sometimes it also shows how out of touch some of our elected representatives really are. As it says on the dust jacket this is a must read for all those who are Ministers of the Crown and those who wish to be, including the opposition. I have read this with a mixture of laughing, crying and just simply shaking my head. This is a book not just for politicians and the students of politics but for those of us who are historians who will one day have to write and define governments and their reasons for success and failure. This is the first time things have been defined and it is a must read for all those in Parliament now!

[Mark Sutherland · Rating 4 out of 5]

An investigation into various mistakes made by recent British governments, summarizing the common problems that seem to underly them. They define blunders as policies that spectacularly fail to achieve what they set out to do, usually with significant cost to the country as a result, and focus on domestic issues which may have received less attention than foreign policy mistakes like the Iraq war.
At the very least this is a useful summary for millennials who will have grown up as most of these events were unfolding and heard them referred to in the news but probably won't have understood their significance at the time (it me).
The second part, which focuses on the issues that contributed to the blunders, is a useful reference for anyone interested in why projects fail and how such failure might be mitigated.
The book is relativity non-partisan and covers from Thatcher to the coalition government, so neatly avoids dealing with the fireworks of the last few years. Hopefully there is another book in the works.
I'd recommend this to anyone interested in how the UK government works (or fails to) or in the failure modes of large organizations in general.

[James Elder · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, but gossipy and somewhat shallow in its analysis.

The authors made some very odd determinations about what counts as a 'blunder' (incidentally I found the use of that word throughout immensely irritating) and what as successful policy.

Examples:

Barbara Castle's 'In Place of Strife' approach to industrial relations is termed a blunder. It was a failure certainly, but that was down to deep divides in the Labour Party not because the proposed approach was a blunder.

The 1980s sell-off of council properties is termed a great success - notwithstanding that elsewhere in the book it suggests that we should only judge the success of policies based on their longterm impact. While the sale of council houses was undoubtedly a popular policy at the time, there are a lot of people who now say that it's one of the roots of the current housing crisis.

I was disappointed that the analysis of what could be done differently didn't call heavily on behavioural psychology or behavioural economics. Daniel Kahneman gets a brief mention, but his ideas aren't really explored. No mention of the planning fallacy and how to counteract it, for example.

Likewise the authors don't follow some of their ideas to their logical conclusion. They mention that an underlying cause of the problems with the Poll Tax, the Child Support Agency and Individual Learning Accounts was that all the Ministers, and most of the Civil Servants came from a similar, privileged, affluent background and found it impossible to imagine how people on the poverty line and with complicated personal circumstances might live. They don't though make any comment at all on how it might therefore be a good idea to try to draw our politicians and administrators from more diverse backgrounds, in order to have leaders who are more likely to be aware of how policies will (or will not) work on the ground.

Overall, some good stuff but not anything like as challenging as it could have been.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This really is a curate’s egg. First two parts, the first listing good things the government has done, the second losing the blunders. I’ve had the book some years, so it’s a bit out of date, latest blunders were under Cameron’s watch, so missing out on some later specials

Then came the reasons for the blunders, but these have been dealt with better by other authors and they kept going over the ground in part 2.

The Epilogue which dealt with the potential blunders of the Cameron government, part 2 finished with Brown’s tenure, was interesting and was fairly accurate in its predictions.

So some 4 star bits, but some 1 star bits.

[Maxi · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some good points in here and it was interesting in parts but there was rlly no need for it to be over 400 pages and also why do they hate unions so much

[Jonny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of enduring relevance and accuracy.

[Luke Hatton · Rating 5 out of 5]

very good but makes you realise how broken the political/governmental system is in the UK

[Neil Denham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super book, the first two parts in particular raised my knowledge of modern politics by about 500%. Written with wit and insight.

[Mette · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of these blunders demonstrate the pay off between simple and complex systems. One might be easy to administer, but open to fraud or ineffective in practice. In contrast, others were highly complex which can cause chaos, confusion and delays in practice.
The poll tax (PM not listening to advice)
One of the primary reasons for its failure was the speed that it went from PM buying the idea to it happening. Experts weren’t consulted and almost all key decisions were made in the run up to the Tory conference by ministers wanting a shiny announcement. - this happens worrying often and is why it’s useful to have shiny things ready for them (which are actually going to work). It’s also interesting that the poll tax was initially thought of as popular because tory activists loved it - have to remember that your activists and your voting population are not one and the same.
There was widespread belief that being on the electoral register made you liable for the poll tax - which meant 700,000 adults disappeared from the roll in 1991
‘The government’s response was muddled. It managed to be both rigid and gelatinously flexible.’ 😂
‘The poll tax homed in like a heat-seeking missile on floating voters in marginal seats’ - politics 101
PT forcing out Maggie ‘Not for the first time in politics, a child had eaten its parent.’

Pensions mid-sold (not realising how markets work, how policy plays out in practice)
An example of ministers being warned of the dangers of their actions but not heeding the warnings
Government delegated regulation to regulators, they delegated it to firms, and firms to ‘compliance officers’, who were under intense pressure not to discourage sales

Child maintenance (gov not understanding the complexity of people’s lives)
When they amended the failing legislation, they made ‘an administrative process that was already horrendously complicated still more complicated. In practice, allegedly better policy resulted in no better and often worse administration’

Individual learning accounts (not realising how markets work, how policy plays out in practice)
One reason for its failure was speed of introduction - because it was 18m until the next election and it had been a manifesto commitment it was rushed through
By the time the scheme closed, estimated that rogue providers had stolen from a quarter of all accounts.
Of the £290m public money spent on the scheme, at least £97 had gone on fraud

Tax credits (annualised approach to benefits is not reflective of people’s lives)
Interesting how many of the TC problems are still debated under UC - the waiting period for initial payment or the lack of responsiveness to fluctuating incomes. Treasury, in an attempt to control, took on the admin of TCs, a disastrous approach because the staff had no clue what they were doing.
This section really made the perils of overpayment clear - people were being asked to repay £1k+ at short notice, making them pretty much destitute. This was largely because estimates of earnings would be taken a year in advance, but also because of IT errors
Expectation that people could manage their benefits online... this doesn’t even work for UC, why would it have worked a decade ago?!

Asset Recovery Agency
‘It was almost certainly a mistake to set up a small free-standing agency alongside existing agencies that were far larger and had far more experience’ - this was done for public political relations rather than it being the best way

IT (this runs through a load of expensive, failed IT projects, then focuses on DCLG’s FiReControl.
- in all cases there was an underestimation of the complexity and probable costs. That led to escalating costs and regular failure
- lack of leadership and oversight of PFIs. Often the IT was developed before gov had decided on what and how it was supposed to achieve
- my favourite example of poor IT planning is the proposed intro of an online retirement planner. They spent 4 years planning it, then just before go-live realised pensions policy was about to be overhauled and its info wouldn’t be reliable. They had to scrap it because the FSA might investigate them for giving misleading financial advice 😂
- ‘wildly overambitious’ and ‘far from being essential’

London tube overhaul (or why public-private partnerships aren’t a godsend)
It was a political pet project and ideological rather than a genuinely good idea
The aim was to outsource risk, but the companies refused and gov went ahead anyway. This meant gov bore nearly all risk at extra cost
By getting private companies to get the loans (which government had to 95% back) the rate was much poorer than for gov bonds, and therefore so much more expensive
When a review explored whether the escalating costs were the result of substandard private company performance or of gov asking more of the company than in the initial specs, it only took a few weeks to decide the former. It subsequently went into administration at huge cost to gov, which essentially bought it into Tfl
In the end it took 5 years to set up, and only 4 years to collapse

ID cards
‘Identity cards increasingly resembled a solution desperately in search of a problem. Unable to find any one problem, the project instead found a whole slew of them.’

What underpins the blunders - human errors:
Cultural disconnect
The civil servant who said ‘try collecting the poll tax in brixton’ was one of the few who foresaw issues
Poll tax ‘scheme was far simpler than a modern society shot through with complexity could possibly accommodate’
Consultation might not make a policy brilliant, but it’ll at least pick up on huge flaws/blunders

Group-think
Consolidating views and silencing dissenters within a group.
One of the main issues with group-think is that is inspires over-optimism and encourages extreme risks
When everyone agrees it becomes difficult to question: ‘when you are totally focused on doing something, you forget to ask yourself whether it is the right thing to do’
Way to avoid group think is to assign someone in a meeting to play devil’s advocate. You can also have a second meeting after a decision’s been reached where everyone sets out any residual doubts and rethinks the issue from other points of view

Intellectual prejudices: pre-judging certain things as better than others, eg public vs private sector, consulting unions vs excluding them
This can mean principles rise above practicalities, eg poll tax theory that everyone should contribute something to taxes, but reality that this isn’t cost-effective and lots of people just wont pay
These prejudices are problematic when they block off policy options.
The result of this is policies with no plan B as officials and politicians feel nothing could possibly go wrong

Operational disconnect
Ministers not understanding that a policy is impractical and not speaking to the people who need to implement it.
Sometimes there’s a belief that if the ops team don’t complain, it must be implementable. While the ops team think they can’t complain because the ministers want to implement it.
‘Mapping backwards’ can be a useful way to stop this. Ie imagine you’ve reached your destination - what had to go well go get there, what pitfalls needed avoiding? It can focus the mind on key considerations. You’re also unlikely to remember where you now, so if starting from Z and working back to A you’ll think through everything, compared with A to Z where people often stall at M

Panic, symbols and spin
This one’s pretty obvious but also pretty undeniable. Politicians react to external events, taking actions to be seen to be doing something, eg dangerous dogs act, where legislation had no effect but calmed manic headlines

What underpins the blunders - system failures
Fragmented departmentalism (silos!) combined with interventions by No10 that are sporadic and often ineffectual
Cabinet meeting decision making is ineffective because you can’t expect s minister to have a policy understanding wide enough to make good decisions. Non-cabinet members will have valid contributions but won’t be in the room. Cabinet’s role should be cohesion over politics not policy.
Most countries have more robust support staff for their PMs than the UK. The book recommends expanding the no10 policy unit a bit as, at the time of writing, it was only 7-8 people often on secondment

Musical chairs: ‘in britain, holders of important portfolios come and go, in most other countries they come and stay.’
‘Rapid turnover is a gourmet recipe for operational disconnect’
The same is true of officials, though this is discussed less as its lower profile
One of the arguments for high minister turnover is that it gives them a wider oversight of links between depts, thus presently silos. But this doesn’t seem to happen in practice - people are reluctant to interfere in the affairs of other departments. They’re also too busy to spend time on areas outside their own.

Asymmetries in expertise between purchasers and providers. By completely outsourcing things (especially IT), civil servants cease being intelligent customers - they can’t brief ministers on possible problems and can’t scrutinise. The civil service struggles to recruit people with commercial expertise.

Compared to other countries, Britain lacks many inhibitors to passing legislation - very rarely are gov dependent on votes of minor parties, HoL is at most an irritant, and the Supreme Court lacks power and authority as compared to German or US versions. This is often viewed as a positive - UK govs can get shit done.
‘All the governments that committed the blunders we investigated were strong and decisive governments, and their very strength and decisiveness made possible - indeed positively encouraged - their blundering’

There’s a theme of a lack of deliberation: decisions taken off the cuff, in haste and in isolation
‘British politicians have a curious habit of functioning in crisis mode - at high speed and in an agitated state - even when no crisis exists.’
‘If politicians are often on a high, journalists and broadcasters seem permanently to be on one.’ This encourages a view of ministers who aren’t constantly announcing new policies as being dithering.
Britain is intensely partisan in its politics, making deliberation difficult. - like the ongoing but never-realised attempt for cross party consensus on longer term social care funding. But when you look at the blunders in the book, few were particularly party political issues.
The book acknowledges the positives of this - while the US has had decades of democratic govs fail to introduce universal healthcare, UK could go ahead and do it. Similarly, Thatcher could privatise industries that other countries in Europe still struggle with.
However the book also claims govs aren’t as strong and decisive as the parties like to claim. It puts this down to: all parties are coalitions if not in name, and fear of losing the next election if they make a wrong call. Deliberation (with the opposition) should be a way out of the latter, and should make policies more likely to stick beyond one gov’s time - important for long term issues.

Epilogue - gives an ‘interim’ look at the coalition gov
On health and social care act 2012: ‘the intellectual tidiness of the scheme was matched only by its political clumsiness.’ 😂 this is also an example of moving way too quick - preparing a bill to overhaul the entire health system in a year it’s unrealistic, unsuccessful and totally unnecessary. There was also no clear need for radical legislation - he could have incrementally built on what previous Tory and labour health secretaries had been building towards, which was essentially a more decentralised model. That would also have fitted with the Lib Dems pro-devolution stance. You can already see that the act’s aim of taking health out of politics has totally failed.
There’s a section on outsourcing ie serco, g4s, capita and atos. focus is on atos disability assessments - summoning people who are in comas, saying people with terminal cancer are fit for work etc. 40% of appeals were successful, costing £500m. The failure to manage these contracts mimics the issues with IT contracts. ‘Incompetent awarders of contracts on the government side have often been matched with greedy and sometimes incompetent contractors on the private-sector side.’

On UC: ‘it is as though someone has deliberately set out to produce a remake of the horror film of Gordon Brown’s earlier blunders.’
‘A scheme intended drastically to simplify complexity was managing to cope only with simplicity.’
While it’s too soon to judge some of the coalition policies entirely, its clear to see that the gov has learnt little from previous blunders. The same issues - disconnect between policy and practice, over-politicisation of policies, hyperactive ministers, ineffectual parliamentary oversight etc - continue in earnest.

[Martin Samuels · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an astonishing and shocking book. It is essential reading for any senior leader in the public service, whether politician or official, and would almost certainly be of value to leaders in other sectors too, as many of the causes of the blunders presented here are as prevalent beyond the walls of government.

Professors King and Crewe, both highly regarded and experienced academics formerly of the University of Essex, set out to understand and explain why governments so often get things so horribly wrong - wasting billions of pounds of taxpayers money and (all to often) causing misery to large numbers of members of the public, and failing to achieve their stated goals. The book is divided into four parts: the first briefly sets the scene, the second provides thirteen case studies (including such well-known calamities as the Poll Tax and the Child Support Agency, as well as less known examples, such as the Assets Recovery Agency), the third provides five human reasons why these blunders happen (such as cultural disconnect and operational disconnect), while the fourth sets out seven systemic reasons (such as the ineffectiveness of Parliament as a check on Ministers and the frequency with which Ministers are moved). An eplilogue considers whether the Coalition Government from 2010 had managed to improve on the tendency to blunder of its predecessors (the authors conclude it had not).

The authors make a very convincing case, and it certainly fits with my own experience as a policy civil servant in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I worked on one major policy change (not one of the case studies used here), where we were working out the details of the policy, designing the IT system and writing the staff guidance materials all at the same time, in order to speed the process. We all recognised that this sometimes meant that the IT system would have been designed to work one way, even if Ministers subsequently decided the policy should work in a different way. And the only senior civil servant who had the courage to tell Ministers firmly that the go live date would have to be delayed was immediately transferred to other duties (though the postponement was agreed).

The book is very well written, with short, clear, even humorous chapters, and the authors are dterminedly non-political - every Government has blundered, and often for the same reasons. That said, it must be noted that Gordon Brown comes in for particular criticism, as being determined to do things his way, calling on only a small inner circle to design his policies, firmly rejecting any advice or, indeed, anything less than wholehearted support for his prposals, no matter how cleaerly flawed.

A truly outstanding book, but current political developments demonstrate that Whitehall had learned nothing since it was first published.

[Andrew Garvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhaustively detailed, compellingly argued account of some of the absolute worst, and most expensive cock-ups made by British governments under Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown, this is a sobering account of just how completely and utterly broken the British political system was a decade ago. Luckily, everything has gone swimmingly since...

Anthony King and Ivor Crewe explain, after some extensive research, just how such monumental blunders as the Poll Tax, Black Wednesday, the Millennium Dome, the Child Support Agency and seemingly every government IT project since the invention of the computer, happened.

They examine the details of what went wrong in each case and then, later in the book, identify the systemic and human failings that led to them. It's impressive stuff and mostly even-handed. At times the authors' bias does peek through. They clearly dislike Gordon Brown (who for all his faults, may have been the last decent human being to hold high office in the UK) and let slip a few sneering asides at him. There's also a mention of teachers' unions as being "the usual suspects" in opposing education 'reforms.' It's almost as if the people who understand the profession best know better than the politicians trying to wreck it. It's an odd comment to have made in a book that identifies a lack of asking people on the ground what they think as being a good way to avoid blunders. They also mention the Thatcher government's selling off of council houses as a successful policy. It's an interesting claim, given the direct line that can (and should) be drawn from that to today's housing and homelessness crisis.

King and Crewe make a convincing and sensible case for some sweeping reforms to Westminster, the Civil Service and to policymaking in general and, in their postscript, take a quick look at the first three years of the Cameron-led coalition to identify potential blunders. It's a fascinating and insightful chapter.

This can be, at times, a heavy-going book, and sometimes gets bogged down in detail and repetition but, on finishing it, I wanted a revised and updated edition, fully covering 2010 to 2023. King died in 2017 but interestingly, Crewe's Twitter bio notes he's working on a sequel. Trimming it to under a thousand pages might be tough.

[SP · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of the book provides very interesting details and stories about some of the biggest government blunders of the last ~50 years. It gets pretty gory in terms of the jaw dropping incompetence on display, but it makes a number of good points about the weaknesses of government and (in particular) ministers.

The second half of the book I found a bit laboured though - it felt like a bit of a lecture on points that I felt were already made in the first half. I was also disappointed that the book contains little in the way of solutions - those discussed were quite airy-fairy, but perhaps the inclusion of detailed proposals for solutions is beyond the scope of a single volume.

The other thing which struck me as extremely odd was no discussion of the Iraq War beyond a few choice comments. I felt the authors wanted to include it, but it perhaps did not meet the time/maturity parameters they used to guide their investigations.

Still a very informative book and a must-read for people interested in practical politics.

[Simon Preston · Rating 4 out of 5]

An erudite but readable compendium of government cock-ups. More importantly the authors move beyond excoriating hapless ministers and look at systemic failures and how they can be avoided. It's even-handed and looks at the efficacy of government policies rather than whether they're right or wrong from an ideological point of view. This makes it a thought provoking read with a great many constructive things to say.

If you're interested, the reasons why governments blunder (ie enact policies that fail to achieve their goals or do so at a disproportionate cost) include lack of deliberation by parliament, lack of communication between departments (the latter not helped by the weakness of the office of the prime minister), cultural disconnect (politicians not realising that not everyone thinks like they do) and operational disconnect (chiefs not knowing what Indians do).

I found this fascinating and genuinely informative.

[Daniel Carr · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clear and well-written account of major policy failures in Britain from the Thatcher government on. I suspect you could only find the content interesting if you worked in policy, as most of what you learn from this book is really only applicable if you are (or might one day be) a civil servant, political advisor, or MP.

The book is structured into four parts, with most of the substance of interest in the second (accounts of various blunders). The following parts, which attempt to dissect how these blunders came to be, is very tedious and formulaic. An explanation is offered in each chapter ('Group Think') and then the authors explain how it drove forward bad decisions in each of the examples given in part two. After a few chapters structured like this, my interest quickly waned.

Still, if you're of the relevant audience, worth checking out for part two, and then skimming the subsequent parts.

[Omar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, it was clear and well sourced account of major blunders the UK government has made in the past 30 years. The first half which deals with each blunder in turn is equal parts hilarious and sad. You begin noticing the structural causes that are a recurring theme, the civil service also comes in for some deserved heat as well as bumbling ministers.

The one issue I have with this book is that it looks at the issues in a sort of fish bowl. How do other countries deal with similar problems? How do they equip their civil service and ministries to deal it? Was it better in the past? Not much of this is asked or answered in any sufficient way.

With Universal Credit being rolled out and Brexit around the corner, this will be a interesting few years with potential highlight-reel blunders. A good book for exciting times in public admin.

[J A · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first Part covers, in painful detail, many of the most egregious blunders of the last several governments in the UK. Crewe and King maintain the right mix of scorn and understanding throughout, and the examples are well contextualized (even for those, like myself, born before many of them occurred).

The second and third Parts, on the Human and Systematic causes of the blunders, are less successful. The structure of the book finds the authors churning over the same blunders as an example of many different problems ('cultural dissonance', 'the lack of a centre to the system') - unsurprisingly, blunders stem from many causes. There are some suggestions at the end of each analysis into the particular cause about what might be done to remedy it, but these form a really peripheral aspect of the book as a whole. Having said that, as long as you're not looking for deep insight into how the UK might overcome its persistent governance problems, this is worth reading.

[Louie White · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy this book a lot. It covers several chapters of different “blunders” in Britains history from the 20th century. Informative read packed with detail. Obviously, there’s some topics you wish they had delved into. For me, I wish the privatization of national rail was included, yet, Thatcher was still covered quite a bit. Some topics are a bit more dull. I appreciate the list of commendations and achievements of the government at the start. I felt the “why” these blunders happen wasn’t as clear, at least to me. Specifically, how it happens and how the system is set up for failure at times. It’s a great read, it’s accessible and enjoyable to read and not a burden full of political jargon.

[Roger Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mike Maidens lent me this.

If you like watching and having opinions about Government in the UK, this is jolly good. If not, you'd find it tiresome and overlong. The authors are unpartisan in displaying a series of huge avoidable cockups, and then go on the analyse how and why they occurred. Having lived through some of these nightmares I found it entertaining and thoroughly depressing. There is no serious prospect of this stopping, & the UK seems particularly prone to this sort of thing.

A few of the cockups I knew nothing about, but most were in my personal experience. Sigh. The authors know their stuff

[Ophelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is thoroughly well-researched and detailed, providing an interesting insight into some of the major blunders of government in modern British history. Whilst it is certainly comprehensive, it did drag a bit towards the end. Part 1 explores a variety of blunders (a chapter for each) while part 2 designates a chapter to each reason for which blunders occur. However, usually the point around the reason is made relatively quickly and there isn't a need to refer back so often and so in depth to each blunder noted in part 1 to demonstrate how it showed said reasoning. It starts to become a little cumbersome.
Nevertheless, it's accessible, for the most part, and intelligently argued.

[Fred Frisbee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this book. Runs over alot of government failures mainly focused on failures to pilot, take outside opinion and actually think what could be wrong both from ministers and civil servants. Most worrying were the IT failures which after universal credit have not got better

Action they recommend is more deliberation and scrutiny of legislation. More ministers in place plus better accountability and skills civil servants and ministers.

Not exactly a page turner but very relevant. As governments can't go brine this is unlikely to get better

[Richard George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enough to make you think a total revolution is required but actually some tweaks to the way Parliament actually operates, the committees especially, could help to start with I think. Then we probably need PR and changes to how the government and PM and parties operate in Parliament, and how ministers, members of Parliament, The Lords, and civil servants work and how their careers might operate. In short some sort of technocratic updating to finally get it all out of the 18th century gentleman's club vibe. Simples!

[Jamie Emerson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very thorough examination of various balls-ups committed by UK governments (1980s to the 2010s) and an exploration of their causes. While entertaining with a wry tone, it’s almost academic in its rigour and structure and therefore does become somewhat repetitive. It’s a great reference, and genuinely thoughtful, but one for wonks and nerds more than for a wider audience. If you read Private Eye, you’ll probably love this book. If you’re more interested in politics as performance, then give it a miss.

[Ipswichblade · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my oldest book on my Kindle, it had sat on there for over 10 years and I am never sure that my reading tastes have changed in that time or why I even purchased it!! Therefore I was delighted to find a really readable book about Government errors and the background to them. Some like the Poll Tax are well known but others such as Tax Credits I was less aware of. The book also examines how bills are passed and who if anyone takes responsibility (spoiler alert, they very rarely do!!)

[Andrew Galley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bit of a dry read for the most part but not so dry that I thought it was a textbook.

This isn't a full review but I wanted to implore anyone who is considering this book, regardless whether they read the whole thing, to read the chapter about accountability. In our current political discourse this is one of the best chapters and summaries I have read in a long time.

[Richard Gillin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scarily accurate portrayal of how even the best-intentioned projects can go wrong and bring misery. A cautionary tale for anyone looking to criticise governments of whichever political hue - disagreement over doctrine (it’s bad because it’s too Tory/socialist/whatever...) often shouts loudest and masks failure to plan...

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Required reading for any Civil Servant working in policy. Good analysis of case studies including the Poll Tax, tax credits, the Millennium Dome and other such delights visited upon us by various governments.

The second half of the book, which explores the human and systemic failures that contribute towards governmental blunders, is a little repetitive and labours the point a bit too much.

[Theo Kokonas · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a very authoritative book and appears to be more geared to policy makers in the way it's written out. I found some of it interesting but it then got a little tiring since its treatment of the subject was written more like a text geared for academia than for the casual reader with an interest in political affairs.

[Jordan Grinyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of reviewers seem to rave about this book, it looks at 'blunders' in the British Government between 1980 and the early 2000's and what caused them.

I enjoyed it and learned a lot, but the middle section of the book mostly served to repeat conclusions and thoughts of the first section.

It was fine