Expertise

A lot has been made over the last couple of days of the fact that Alan Johnston is to be Shadow Chancelor of the Exchequer but has no background in economics.On Radio 4 Evan Davies, himself an economist, suggested tht it would take ages for anyone to master the subject. I think that such commentators are completely wrong. It is not he job of political leaders to be experts in the departments in which they serve. That is the role of their civil servants and political advisors. Were we to ask every head of a department in the government to be an expert in the subject of which he was in charge, we would have a tiny field to choose form in most departments and, almost certainly, abject boredom for all the journalists. We know this from remembering the speeches on economic matters by Gordon Brown, actually not an economist but someone who believed he was. And if you take this argument to its rational conclusion we would never have a Prime Minister for which politician, apart from en ex-prime minister, can claim any expertise in that area until he has done the job? No, what we ask of our political leaders is judgement, both from their life experience and bearing in mind the need of the country as they see it. Yes, they ceratinly have to have those qualities or they will be walked all over by their departmental civil servants and, I suppose, that is what commenators fear about the appointment of a non-expert when there are people in the shadow cabinet who can show education and experience in the field concerned. I can sympathise with Ed Miliband. If he wants to determine a sensible economic policy and an effective opposition to the governement, the last thing he needs is a really strong and knowledgeable shadow chancellor who will seek to monopolise all discussion of economic affairs. I wonder what would have happened if Tony Blair had moved Gordon Brown from the Treasury in 2001 and made him Foreign Secretary? It would have allowed GB to claim great success and it might well have had a serious effect on the Iraq and, subsequently, Afghanistan policies. The trouble with leaving him at the Treasury was that he came to believe that he really did know all the answers – the biggest danger for every politician. Gladstone’s success as a Chancellor of the Exchequer made his successors, when he was Prime Minister, into minnows. However, there are dangers in appointing non-experts too. You only have to look at what Winston Churchill did in the Conservative government of 1924-9 to see that. In many people’s eyes his return to the gold standard at the pre-1914 conversion rate sealed the fate of industrial recovery in that decade and made the Depression worse thatn it might have been. The case of Ian MacLeod in 1970 is interesting. He knew what he wanted to do with the economy but died just after the successful election of 1970, for the Conservatives. The result was that the economic policy of the Heath governement of 1970 to 1974 never attempted to deal with inflation and the power of the unions with any success. So there are arguments both ways ! Bye for now.