John McTernan: Weak point at heart of government

DAVID Cameron’s management style has been on display for the past few weeks during the Liam Fox scandal – and it shows a real weakness. It has often been remarked that the Prime Minister likes to operate as the chairman of the board rather than the chief executive. He stands back from operational matters, trusting his ministers to deliver operationally.

This has been promoted as some kind of antidote to the Blairite style of government, usually described as either casual (“sofa government”) – or dictatorial (“control freakery”). Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, wisely observed that it does not matter what precise piece of furniture you sit on when you are making decisions, what matters is the quality of the decision.

So, when David Cameron has had a hard call to make what has happened? He has ducked and delayed it. The Fox resignation is just the latest example, but it may be the tipping point.

The Prime Minister’s approach to any errors of judgment is to first ignore them – defend and deny. Then he gets more involved and he says it’s only fair that the minister gets the chance to put his slant on the story.

On the surface, this looks fair. Who doesn’t deserve a hearing? The chance to put their own side? It’s actually one of Cameron’s most attractive characteristics that he wants to be a different type of PM – not automatically sacking someone simply because the tabloids want them done over.

However, in the end, it’s a real weakness because any Prime Minister has to make a hundred decisions a day, and – big or small – they have to be the right ones. This all fundamentally goes to judgment. And the biggest test of that is not what you do for technical, policy issues but how you treat real people – friends, colleagues, even Cabinet enemies.

The PM’s treatment of Fox has been revealing. Any member of the public watching this would have concluded early on that the Defence Secretary was not just a wrong ’un, but that he was a goner. The public – as ever – was right.

But even jaded political hacks, veterans of a thousand political tussles, were clear – this was always a question of when, not if, Fox had to go. So why did Cameron not see this? Some, ludicrously, have said it reflects some kind of loyalty that he shows to Cabinet colleagues. Sadly, it is what it seems to be: abject weakness.

A crisis does reveal. Tony Blair, faced with difficulties, acted quickly. Too fast? Perhaps. But stories never dragged and dragged. That’s what kills not merely the minister involved, but the government as a whole. Because a lengthy scandal means that details are dragged out piecemeal over days. This doesn’t change the eventual outcome, but it incredibly weakens the PM and his government.

Cameron – or his office – should have known what the endgame would be. It is damaging for the PM to have been revealed as so weak. In many ways, though, it is understandable that he didn’t want to act.

Work for any politician and you realise that they wait and wait until they use their power and authority – it’s a currency. But what about his office – his political enforcers? They should have been all over this. As should the Whips’ office. An extraordinary failure of organisation.

So, what have we learned? Cameron lacks a killer instinct. He showed one last year – in process terms – when he outmanoeuvred Labour and created the coalition. But that was necessary and he was able to manipulate his own party because he had locked the Lib Dem votes. Faced with Fox – a Tory from the faction he most feared, the modern Tory right – he froze.

Cameron is not stupid. He must have seen through the evasions from Fox. He simply feared firing him in case the Hard Right were angered. Is that the firmness Britain needs at the G8 and G20?

He also lacks a killer staff. Thinking back a few years to the then No 10 operation I was part of running for Blair, I’m absolutely clear – I’m not the only one who would have yelled “off with his head!” in those Blair days. There would have been queues of ordinary, decent people. But the current No 10, with some exceptions – Andrew Cooper, the brilliant pollster, springs to mind – stood off. If your staff won’t be brutal, then – as PM – you never will.

We have also learned that the civil service has been tamed by the Tories. Imagine if a Labour foreign minister in the first term, 1997-2001, had had a secret adviser, paid for by their union. One who had held meetings in Germany, the US, and Spain – all then nations with progressive governments – and had asked for information from the governments but had sold companies in to the FCO. This would have been the ultimate New Labour sleaze.

Now, No 10 probably reckon they have got away with this. They have got Fox to resign, but they also have moved on to a supposedly unrelated aggressive policy agenda designed to reassure women they can trust the Tories and Cameron. And in a way, they have. The ditch has been drawn round Fox. He’s one of a kind. No implications for all the rest. And maybe so. Few ministers – male or female – have pushed so hard to get an outsider into their presence, at home or abroad.

But here is a slow burn scandal that affects almost all government ministers. When Cameron set a cap on the number of special advisers, in order to have fewer than Gordon Brown, he set off a process that has successfully subverted him. Almost every Cabinet member found a way to appoint to their private office a temporary civil servant – invariably someone who worked for the Tories in opposition.

This has all the hallmarks of corruption – and the civil service knows it. Labour’s political advisers were all known. Temporary civil servants were – as in my office – temps from an agency covering vacancies. This is not glamorous – who should be appointed or not. But if the civil servants talk, as they did over Fox, it could be deadly for the government.

• John McTernan is a former political adviser to Tony Blair