MIliband's unthinking managerialism

Ed Miliband’s new year message demonstrates that the Labour leadership still has an unreflective managerialist ideology.

He starts by saying, rightly, that “many people feel politics cannot answer their problems.” He continues: “My party's mission in 2012 is to show politics can make a difference. To demonstrate that optimism can defeat despair.”

But this raises the obvious question: if Labour can show that “optimism can defeat despair”, why has it so far failed to do so? 

Miliband seems unaware of this problem. And there are some obvious cognitive biases which allow him to suppress such dissonance. One is the optimism bias: “we can do better.” There‘s also the egocentric bias: “it’s me who’ll find the solution.” And there‘s also base rate neglect: “let’s ignore the fact that we’ve failed in the past”. As Dan Hodges taunts, Miliband is simply pretending that 2011 never happened.

This belief that one can reach a happy future even though you have failed to do so in the past is a characteristic feature of managerialist ideology. As I wrote in my book:

To the managerialist, the past is irrelevant. All that matters is the future. Management is always “moving forward”, “striving”, “progressing”. To managerialists, the best is always yet to come.

In writing that, I was, of course, echoing Alasdair MacIntyre’s line that the managerialist state is “always about to, but never actually does, give its clients value for money.”

Herein lies my fear. Just a a fish cannot see that water is wet, so Miliband cannot see that he is taking a profoundly ideological position here - the idea that centralized leadership can find solutions even though it hasn‘t done so in the past.  And if you can’t see that your position is ideological, you’ve no hope of considering that it might be wrong.

Comments

[Tom Addison]

"We can do better... it's me who'll find the solution... let's ignore the fact we've failed in the past"

Pssh, sounds like Arsene Wenger to me

*Awaits slap in face*

[chris]

Consider yourself slapped. 4 league titles and world coach of the decade award suggests a modicum of success, and ability to find solutions.

[Tom Addison]

Okay I'll admit it, I'm a pretty big admirer of Wenger's, even if he is somewhat bounded by the paramters of perfection. Then of course there's the rumour that he steals foreksins and irons them on his face.

[Keith]

But any one can be wrong. Your ideology is not decisive. You can mistake facts even if your theory is right or right most of the time. I also am not comfortable with this grand dismissive contempt for centralised decision taking by politicians you seem to have. Some one must take decisions. Unless you subscribe to the idea that some how an as yet un invented hidden mechanism can make every thing right with out human intervention? "The market" with a capital M or even a Anarchist society requires human judgement to work. millipede does not inspire confidence as he is a twat. But then that reflects the narrow pool of candidates from which Labour draws its leaders.
It also reflects the dismally right wing and un convincing economic policy agenda that Labour followed in power and has not really repudiated. How are you going to improve my life Mr Milliband? If he could give a convincing answer more people might vote for him. May be the Labour leadership should start to think about the effects of their crap policies on the people they supposedly represent for a change?

[windsock]

I think he'd have a better chance of convincing voters if he spoke in complete sentences and not chopped up phrases.
"To demonstrate that optimism can defeat despair.” The man can't even think in a coherent sentence. What hope does the Labour Party have with a semi-retarded parrot as its leader?

[BenSix]

"I think he'd have a better chance of convincing voters if he spoke in complete sentences and not chopped up phrases."

Ain't that the truth. Listening to Miliband reminds me of my infants school's assemblies. Except, of course, that my headteacher knew what she was on about.

[John H]

Interesting to compare your description of "managerialism" with Peter Oborne's post on "modernisation" earlier this week.

[John H]

Grr. Typepad not letting me post links. Let's try this:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100126347/it%E2%80%99s-modernisation-not-morality-that-is-the-dirty-word-of-politics/

[Michaella]

This is a great article, and a great topic to explore. Thanks for sharing.