My countries right or wrong?

I was surprised by the strength of emotion when my Irish passport arrived. I had never particularly thought about national identity before; in a rather unconsidered and snobby way, I probably felt myself to be beyond such atavistic notions. But the EU referendum, and the eddying and fractious national debate that followed, put paid to that.

The prospect of long queues at passport control, and loss of rights - to live and work abroad – that I have barely used, spurred me (like thousands of other Brits) to apply for an Irish passport. After some weeks, and very helpful discussions with the Department for Foreign Affairs (my family background is complicated by adoption), my passport arrived with a picture of me that somehow looks about five times more Irish than I ever have in the flesh. And I suddenly felt a forceful sense of attachment, a spark of connection to a country that I visit regularly but have never lived in. Did I feel Irish? Not really, but I felt something.

I’ve been turning this over in my mind since, as the debate over the future of nations and unions after Brexit has intensified, trying to assess my own perceptions of national identity, and considering how these might be affected by possible futures. My first conclusion is that we use the term ‘national identity’ too broadly. We treat it as one thing, when in fact the term covers quite distinct and potentially divergent affiliations. They don't overlap or compete (though they can do both of those), but rather describe different types of relationship. I can count three (but I'm sure others have undertaken a more sophisticated analysis): cultural identity, personal identity and political identity.

My cultural identity is probably split between England and Ireland. I’ve always balked at the Shamrock ’n’ Shillelaghs sentimentalism of plastic paddies, but I do feel cultural affinity with Ireland. Sure, some of my favourite poets and writers are Irish, but some of my favourite singer-songwriters are Canadian so there must be more to it than that - a shared sense of humour perhaps, a love of wordplay, a dank melancholia, a complicated relationship with rain and catholicism. This identity has strengthened – or possibly felt able to ‘come out’ – in the past decades as Ireland emerged from the dour shadow of Eamon de Valera’s insular conservatism, to become highly internationalised and socially progressive.

My personal identity is more clearly English. I have lived in England all my life, and it is England’s urban and rural landscape that seems familiar and homely to me. To be fair, this is probably concentrated in southern England – between the Cotswolds, the Chilterns and the South Downs, with towns and villages of red brick, golden stone and steely flint. But I have lived as far north as County Durham, have a partner from Scarborough and holiday every year in the Lake District, so my tendrils of attachment stretch across the country.

Do I mean British by this? I really don’t think I do. I have enjoyed visiting Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but they are clearly distinct places – the shops, the language, the beer, even the banknotes are different. They may not feel as distinct as continental European countries, but they are not ‘home’ either.

And to be honest, devolution has deepened this sense of difference. If part of citizenship is knowing how to secure your rights from and undertake your duties to the state, then my citizenship feels increasingly limited to England. I no more understand the Scottish criminal justice or social care system than I do the French.

Which raises the question of political identity. Here my affiliation is to the United Kingdom. I vote for a UK government, carry a UK passport and pay my taxes to the UK state (while I was in favour of remaining in the EU, I've never really felt like a 'citizen of Europe'). But that affiliation feels more and more contingent, and unrooted in any of the deeper affection that I feel towards England or even Ireland. I have none of the passion for ‘the Union’ that is ritually expressed by politicians. When I see Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish politicians arguing for independence, I find it hard to argue against them, and hard not to think that I would do the same in their place.

There are downsides to the calls for independence of course. Politically, loss of Scotland and Northern Ireland would tilt the English and Welsh rump further to the right: the Conservatives would have won a majority in every election since 2005 without Scotland and Northern Ireland. But then again, as a Scottish Nationalist MSP forcefully pointed out to me some time ago, it is not Scotland’s job to counterbalance a conservative majority in England and Wales.

It feels to me quite likely that calls for Irish reunification and Scottish independence will grow over the next Parliament, and it is hard to see how they can be resisted over the long term. Whether I carry a passport from the United Kingdom of England and Wales, or - who knows - the United Republic of Ireland and Scotland, may affect where my taxes are paid, who governs me and how easily I can travel abroad, but it won’t make much difference to the way that I think of myself and my countries.

--> -->

On the bold and the dutiful

I don’t find myself naturally warming to Dominic Cummings. Our politics are different, I’m suspicious of some of his tactics, and I find his airy dismissal of ‘London liberals’ every bit as glib and patronising as the elite attitudes he is so keen to denounce.

Since the beginning of the year, Cummings’ call out for ‘super-talented weirdos’ to work with him at the heart of government has provided a focal point for his many detractors (alongside the affectedly casual dress sense – the Steve Hilton de nos jours). The language is geeky and alienating; it flies in the face of proper recruitment practice; it betrays an over-familiarity with game theory and cyberpunk fiction, and an under-acquaintance with the realities of public administration.

All true up to a point (though the blog’s language is no more obscure than the half-digested formulas of regular HR-speak – “socialising key metrics with wider stakeholders to drive outcomes” etc). But behind the buzz-words, you can detect the anxiety faced by any reforming administration: how on earth can the machinery of government deliver radical change?

The caution and conservatism of the civil service is canonical. In episode after episode of ‘Yes Minister’, Minister Jim Hacker comes up with a seeming common-sense proposal, only to be talked out of it (“a very bold proposal, Minister”) by Sir Humphrey, permanent secretary and inertia incarnate. Yes Minister was broadcast forty years ago, but still resonates with anyone who works with or in government, despite endless civil service modernisation, change and transformation programmes.

My first encounter with ‘Yes Minister Live’ was a memo (or ‘minute’ to use the Whitehall terminology) that I found when setting up the Greater London Authority. It referred to one of Notting Hill Carnival’s periodic financial crises, and wondered whether there as a case for government intervention. A handwritten note by a senior civil servant concluded: “I think we should re-assure ourselves there is nothing we can do.”

A few years later, preparing for the London Olympics, I moved from the GLA, where the lawyers and finance teams did their best to find a way of legally doing what the mayor wanted to do, to a government department, which seemed beset by other departments – in particular the Treasury and the Treasury Solicitors (government legal service) – trying to make it difficult to do what the Cabinet had agreed and the Prime Minister had announced.

Part of this is cultural: few in Whitehall ever lost their job for doing nothing. But I don’t think it is good enough simply to demand culture change in the civil service. Nobody was acting irrationally, but in accordance with long-established principles about how public spending is agreed, monitored and reported - and how politics is performed. Any ministerial tendency to innovation quickly wilts when faced with a request for formal directions from civil servants or the rough music of a Public Accounts Committee hearing.

In any case, for all the enthusiastic praise of ‘disruption’, mantras like Facebook’s “move fast and break things” feel a bit off when applied to public services, given that the ‘things’ that might be broken are people’s lives, rather than clever widgets for a search engine. In public administration, there is an understandably greater tolerance for poor performance that can be corrected over time than there is for the risk of dramatic failure that requires a fresh start.

But, all that said, we do need policy-making and -delivery that is better informed, more agile, more capable of experimentation and adaptation. This requires internal changes in Whitehall, and fresh people thinking fresh ideas, but they will run into the sand without a transformation in the operating environment provided by Westminster and the media.

Ministers should feel as comfortable admitting the failures of policy initiatives as they are spinning (often dubious) successes. They should acknowledge complexity rather than signal-boosting simple solutions. Parliamentarians and press commentators should step aside from ‘gotcha’ denunciations to respect such honest admissions and discussions.

Yeah, and pigs should fly. It is hard to see any of this happening in such a febrile and fractious environment. But we need change if we are to re-tool government for the challenges of this decade, or even this century. Perhaps this Government, and this Prime Minister, with the security provided by their majority, could take the first steps in the way they talk about, implement and evaluate policy. Issues like post-Brexit trade, social care, climate change, and regional economic policy require innovation, agility and honesty, rather than the staleness, inertia and bad faith that dominate today.