McClaren: yes

Darling: yes

It all depends on whether you think the guy in charge should have been able to inspire a better performance from the team. Personally, I don’t think the case against Mr Darling is as strong as that against Mr McLaren.

[shameless] Further Football/Politics analogies here [/shameless]

So how does the roundball winter game equate with a particularly ugly data screw-up which in private industry would make the PCI or BPSL blacklist the organisation involved?

Robert,

I felt for Darling initially. It was clearly something that happened without his involvement. But the reason I want him out is that some 23-yo junior is holed up in a hotel somewhere (chaperoned by a media minder), who is taking the flack, when it appeared that more senior – although not, it seems, Darling – knew and and were involved in the incident. This was kept from the public, while the junior became a byword for “muppet”.

This is what gets up my nose, and why I think Darling should go. When a government misleads the public deliberately, and is caught using a scapegoat, something is rotten.

I think we should try to avoid turning these comments into an Iain Dale-styled gossip column based on statements from Shadow Ministers. Aaron, if you are calling for Darling’s resignation you clearly know something I haven’t seen proven. What evidence do you have that Darling knowingly misled the House?

Aaron:

Bob has a point – its much more likely that Darling has been Sir Humphrey’d here.

Agreed with Bob Piper too….. for now.

So how does the roundball winter game equate with a particularly ugly data screw-up which in private industry would make the PCI or BPSL blacklist the organisation involved?

Tony, I’m loving this comment! I admit I’m suffering from a bad case of journalese here – inappropriate sporting metaphors are a media staple.

An academic question in McClaren’s case, but if there is an analogy it’s that I don’t think either was a particularly good appointment in the first place. McClaren is a natural No 2, and almost all of his success in club and international football has been as an assisant (with Derby under Jim Smith, with Man Utd under Fergie, with England under Sven.) Similarly, Alistair Darling is one of those Chancellors (Tony Barber and Norman Lamont were others) who owe their political powerbase to the Prime Minister rather than having carved one out in their own right. History shows that the more successful Chancellors – Denis Healey, Ken Clarke, Brown himself – fall into this latter category.

Bob,

I understand a senior member of the HMRC was CCd on an email relating to the issue. I doubt the Tories are daft enough to make it up – even if they’ve drawn extravagant conclusions. And I understand is was several weeks before the public was told anyway – which is public record.

The government have handled this, and the NR situation, horribly.

Anyway, I find this “shit rolls down hill” approach to management abhorrent. It’s something I have experienced in the very worst of organisations.

Aaron, I don’t doubt either the CC’ing of the e-mail, or the ‘shit rolls downhill’ approach, but neither of those means that Darling misled the House of Commons. I find the desire to find scapegoats as unhealthy as you mate, which is why I’m surprised you’re making Darling into one.

As it happens, I agree with Paul Linford that Darling will not be a particularly good Chancellor, although I suspect anyone Brown appoints to the Treasury is going to have a difficult time because the Treasury officials are likely to be still taking their lead from No. 10.

…but neither of those means that Darling misled the House of Commons. ~ Bob

Agreed, but I’m not as confident as you.

Darling had 10-days or so to find out what had gone wrong, not to mention the time prior to him being told, so they knew someone higher was in the loop (if not, then they should tell us the Civil Service hid it from Darling).

So why try and blame a 23-yr old, if it’s not to mitigate the political impact?

There is no doubt that Darling is not operationally at fault (even if the systems are bobbins – this would be Brown’s fault, surely), and maybe I’m being hasty thinking he should go, but if the government have used this guy as media fodder, then someone high deserves to tumble…

Yes. I read and inwardly digest every email that I’m ever cc-ed into. I would have no defence against a charge of incompetence based upon not having read every email that I’m cc-ed into by the lazy nurks that I work around who imagine that cc-ing everyone in = discharge of responsibility to communicate.

On the wider scale, there is an analogy with McClaren here. In both cases, there is a sizeable demand to sack the manager (the biggest target we can find). Once that’s done, our appetite for decisionmaking is pretty well sated.

But it isn’t enough, is it?

Steve McClaren’s appointment is one of dozens of factors that have chucked England out of 2008. How many of those won’t be addressed not the tabloids have had their histrionic campaign for a scapegoat satisfied?

Similarly, the entire civil service in this country has been in a mess for a very long time. Yes Minister was made in the early 1980s, after all, and was based upon experiences in the mid-70s.

It is a gentleman-amateur body that has been largely infiltrated by private Management Consultants. It is constantly re-organised by initiativitis-obsessed politicians who are in turn terrified of not being seen to be providing ‘leadership’.

It is having to meet the demands of an increasingly dynamic population who have increasingly complex demands, and it has to face comparison with other entities that are much better at fundraising.

It’s employees are largely demotivated and enervated by constant change and idiotic management, by a workplace audit-culture, and by the fact that personal commitment and hard work goes unrecognised.

And none of that will change as long as we always look for a single celebrity scapegoat – particularly one who has almost no levers to pull that can change the way it works.

Now if we were to have a politicised civil service where ministers could make all of the major appointments, that would be a different matter.

But we don’t, do we?