Cronies and Cronyism

Political cronyism is a widespread fact of life.

Look around and you will see examples of it everywhere - impossible concentrations of political 'placemen' (and women) in lucrative jobs or public appointments which they owe not to talent or hard work - but to their allegiance to a particular political party. 

Now Labour is not the only offender it has to be said, but the party was in power for 13 years between 1997 and 2010 - so there was plenty of time for the network of party supporters to do its work of putting 'one of their own' into positions of influence and power - and its legacy is still around for everyone to see.

Scotland is good example because there are now only around 15,000 individual Labour Party members in the whole of Scotland - yet statistically impossible concentrations of well-known Labour Party supporters crop up in key areas of public life, such as the trade unions.

The only explanation for these hot spots is that there must be a 'hidden hand' at work - a network that delivers for its own tribe and which makes key recruitment decisions based on criteria other than merit and ability.

Here's an article by Mary Dejevsky in the independent newspaper which starts with the example of the Reverend Paul Flowers as a textbook example of cronyism before going on to cite other areas - from the police to the banking industry to the top military - where the public interest has been let down.      


The rise of Paul Flowers offers a textbook example of cronyism

He was sped to his position by indulgences typical in the British elite

By Mary Dejevsky



The plight of the Rev Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-operative Bank, prompts tears and laughter in almost equal measure. The headlines – combining the Methodist minister, his bank and hard drugs – have provided some of the most entertaining and improbable copy since the first revelations of David Blunkett’s affair. The comedy, though, should not be allowed to obscure the tragedy and the disgrace, which go far beyond the personal.

That someone at once so unqualified, so well connected and – for want of a better word – so flawed could rise to head a respected bank, despite so many slips along the way, should be treated as the national scandal it is, a blistering commentary on the recruitment and calibre of our top management. For the rise and rise of Rev Flowers is not, however much it suits certain people and interest groups to make it such, a matter either of party politics or of banking.

However mightily Flowers seems to have benefited from his Labour Party connections, whatever indulgences might have been shown to him as a Methodist minister, and whatever chance led to his having a senior position in British banking thrust upon him, his career is no more than a distillation of the considerations that speed so many to senior positions in this country today. Alas, this applies even now, in the 21st century, when qualifications and merit are what supposedly counts.

How much longer do we have to listen to clipped accents promoting the Rolls-Royce machine that is supposedly our top Civil Service as a model for public administration the world over? Remember the botched franchising of the West Coast mainline? Think, too, of the outsourcing of tagging and Olympic security that was so poorly managed that it cost far more than it should have done and still did not deliver the goods. Think of those ever more expensive aircraft carriers.

How do we still have the brass neck to sell the NHS as a global paradigm, when an elementary exercise in mass computerisation failed; the whole system creaks out of nine-to-five office hours, and there are elderly patients, not just at Mid Staffs, who cannot get even a drink of water? How much trust can our top police command, when Hillsborough records appear to have been tampered with and an investigation into the treatment of a cabinet minister has called into question the probity of senior officers and is still lumbering on after more than a year?

And how can we revere the City of London as the last word in efficiency and probity, when it has allowed itself – among so many other excesses – to be stung by the vanity listings of dubious companies and failed to prevent the rigging of Libor?

One welcome by-product of the rise to prominence of parliamentary committees has been the glimpse their proceedings have afforded of the truly lamentable standards of management in almost every branch of national life, public and private. We have watched leading bankers admit that they have not a banking qualification between them. We have watched well-intentioned BBC executives, past and present, evince barely an inkling of the ethical and financial responsibility that should attend their rather solid salaries. We are currently watching erstwhile luminaries of the press having to defend their conduct at the Central Criminal Court.

In a report out this week, which deserves much more attention than its modest title – “Depending on the Right People” – may attract, James de Waal, an associate of the London think tank Chatham House, casts a profoundly troubling spotlight on relations between top politicians and the military between 2001 and 2010 (the age, of course, of the Afghanistan and Iraq debacles; the age, also, of Tony Blair).

De Waal’s study debunks what might be the last of our national illusions: that the top brass always, and necessarily, have the national interest front and centre; or that government ministers and top civil servants are as competent as we might expect them to be. Drawing on, among other things, testimony given to the Iraq inquiry – which report has still not been published – de Waal identifies the lack of any reliable system for policy-making, even when that entails the waging of war.

The advantages of the British way of doing things, de Waal argues, might be flexibility and speed. But it also brings “incoherence, inconsistency and opacity”. Too much, he suggests, depends on personal relationships – or cronyism, as we might call it in other people’s countries. What we need, he insists, is a formal legal framework, more open debate, and records that show “who gave what advice, when and why”. And so, if we want to be a truly modern state, we do.

From now on, anyone tempted to extol the British way of doing things and recommend it as a model for others should first have to chronicle the charmed life of the Rev Paul Flowers and explain how this train wreck could have been avoided.

Unlikely Events (22 May 2013)

I wrote an article for a Scottish newspaper many years ago under the heading 'Long Odds and Unlikely Events'.

Here are a few extracts to illustrate the central point I was making - about impossibly high concentrations of 'politically connected' people dominating key areas of public life.

Long Odds and Unlikely Events

Long odds and unlikely events are not as common as people think.

Bookies will lay odds of 1,000 to 1 against Scotland winning the next world cup; a tad generous perhaps, even to misty-eyed members of the Tartan Army. 

But give punters the real odds of an impossible event and they’ll hold on to their money, which is why bookies will quote odds of 250 to 1 for concrete evidence proving the Loch Ness Monster really exists.

In politics, probability theory also has some equally fascinating applications. For example, at best, there are 22,000 Labour party members in Scotland, which was the official figure used in connection with Labour’s leadership ballot that turned into a one horse race. 

But take 22,000 at face value and weigh this against the number of Scots aged between 16 and 65. According to Scotland’s national census office there were 3,375,884 Scots in this age group in June 2000. 

The next step is to divide 22,000 into 3,375,884 million which equals 0.65% of the total adult population of Scotland. The final answer is that the odds of a random person being a member of the Labour party are 153 to 1. 

All things being equal, that is how often you should bump into a Labour party member at work, rest or play, at least within organisations that claim to be independent and non-party political. If one particular group dominates parts of public life, out of all proportion to its numbers, some hard questions need to be answered. But this does not change the odds: 153 to 1 remains the acid test, and any peaks and troughs should average out over time. 

Discrimination is not a branch of rocket science. It’s as easy to spot as the proverbial elephant on your doorstep; the hard part is having the courage to tackle the vested interests that benefit from pork-barrel politics, which all parties are guilty of from time to time. 

Is party membership a passport to success? Do supporters get a hand up that’s not on offer to followers a different political faith?

Equal opportunity policies without effective monitoring and scrutiny are a sham; processes should operate to the highest standards, highlighting areas of under or over representation without fear or favour.

Putting information about party membership into the public domain means allows people to decide for themselves whether hidden forces are at play. 

So if you had 5 people out of 8 in the same organisation (very much on the low side for trade unions, in my experience) who are all members of the Scottish Labour Party - then the odds of that happening by sheer chance are 35 trillion to 1.

The calculation being - 3,375,884/8 x 153 to 1 x 153 to 1 x 153 to 1 x 153 to 1 x 153 to1 - or, to put it another way, the odds of winning the national lottery are hugely better - in fact a complete snip at only 14 million to 1.

So is it this just an amazing coincidence Scotland's trade unions are stuffed to the rafters with Labour Party members at senior levels - or is there a hidden force at work to help explain such an unlikely outcome?

Now ordinarily this would matter too much - but on this occasion it does because trade unions claim to be representative organisations - and that can only be true if they reflect the make-up and diverse views of their grassroots, rank-and-file members. 

If they don't - then it's a complete sham of union democracy and makes a mockery of a modern approach to equal opportunities.