Asset complementarities and Clarke

The failure to deport foreign criminals after their release from prison is yet more evidence that Clarke is a contemptible little turd.
To see why, think about Tesco in Hampstead. It owns a shop in England's Lane and one in Heath Street.  Why should these two assets be owned by the same firm? Because  it's more efficient if the two work together. They can get their goods from a single warehouse, rather than two. Their combined buying power can help reduce costs, and some administrative functions, such as hiring workers, can be shared between the two stores.
The England's Lane and Heath Street shops are, in economic jargon, complementary assets. They work better together than separately.
However, to reap these efficiencies, the England's Lane and Heath Street shops need a common boss who can co-ordinate buying and adminstration functions. Hence there is sometimes a good economic justification for hierarchy, as Oliver Hart explains in this pdf.
The parallel here with the Home Office should be obvious. In the treatment of foreign criminals, the prisons and immigration departments should have been complementary assets; the prisons should have told the immigration department: "There's a scrote here that needs booting out."
This seems not to have happened. The potential asset complementarity between prisons and immigration was not reaped. They acted as separate departments.
This is a plain management failure. One proper function of management is to co-ordinate activities so as to reap synergies. Clarke failed to do this.
Of course, everyone makes mistakes. But this is a particularly contemptible one, in two ways.
1. It raises the question: what is the point of the head of the Home Office, if he doesn't co-ordinate departments? It's not as if this is the first management error in the Home Office: it can't even construct meaningful accounts. Maybe Alex is right. It not just Clarke that should go - so should the whole Home Office.
2. It exposes the sheer dishonesty of New Labour's managerialist ideology.  It claims to be able to run government like a business. And yet Clarke fails to perform the basic functions of company management.
What Clarke seems to want, then, are the advantages of hierarchy - the power and prestige it gives him - without the responsibilities.
As I said, never mind that he’s unfit to be Home Secretary. It’s unacceptable that Clarke should even be alive.

Comments

[Backword Dave]

Well said, Chris.

[dearieme]

It's time that we all marched on Whitehall carrying scythes, pitchforks and lengths of rope.

[Jim]

"It’s unacceptable that Clarke should even be alive."

No it isn't. Either kill him yourself or shut up about it, but either way stop complaining about him being alive and go back to doing what you do best - complaining about what he does.

[laika the space dog]

I can't help but think that a politician who did resign on a point of principle when something went wrong in his department would actually do his career some good.

He'd get a lot of praise in the press, some respect from the public and someone else would have to sort his mess out. The politician would be able to make some money on the chat show circuit and would be top of the list to return to the cabinet when the heat was off. He might even look like an alternative leader.

Lord Carrington is remembered only because he resigned, quite rightly, as Foreign Secretary after the Argentinians invaded the Falklands but he is remembered well. David Blunkett's hapless clinging to office, or Clair Short's contemptable stance, only brought them discredit and disdain.

A Home Secretary's only job is to lock people up, and the more people he locks up the more popular he'll become. The only thing the electorate like more than locking criminals up is deporting them, one would think a politician would realise this at some point.