Accountability in UK Politics and the new Labour government
Accountability can hold the negative connotation of being boring and un-sexy. When we talk about politics and leaders, we often prefer to talk about other concepts like honesty, strength, relatability, and openness, but accountability is an integral part of the machinery of government. I wrote this piece on the evening of the UK general election, 4th July, as I reflected on the current nature of politics in my home country. Today we know that Labour are now the governing party with a landslide. The question of accountability is central to the state of government and challenges they have inherited, as well as much of Labour’s messaging, manifesto, and some of the open questions on how they will drive forward action on their five missions. In the first half of this piece, I explore the current state of accountability in UK politics, then in the second half, I begin to look at new accountability mechanisms that may feed into Labour’s five missions and some of the changes planned to pursue them.
Accountability is about being responsible for the consequences of your words, decisions, and actions, thereby having the association of being constraining or limiting. And it is, by intentional design. In politics, accountability involves checking and balancing power to prevent its potential abuse and respond when it is abused. In representative democratic systems, accountability mechanisms are key in many ways and directions; for example, at the most primary level, for ensuring political representatives reflect the interests of and mandate given by the general public, and that civil servants are guided by these representatives’ input.
What can accountability look like?
Accountability mechanisms can be hard or soft, explicit or implicit, and pursued through different mediums. They don’t only deter or prevent behaviour determined as bad or undesirable, but also reinforce what is seen as a necessary and desirable part of the role of a government, civil servant, or minister.
Hard mechanisms include law, codes of conduct, auditing, and formal institutions or processes created to enable the usage of these. In the UK, examples include inquiry processes (e.g. into Partygate), institutions such as the Office for Budget Responsibility (the UK’s official independent fiscal watchdog that produces financial forecasting to judge the government’s performance), and the Ministerial Code and Civil Service code which guide how individuals conduct themselves within office or position.
Yet all organisations — including political ones — also run on unwritten rules which may technically be non-binding but can certainly feel compulsory, for good or bad. Soft mechanisms of accountability come from the language, culture, and tacit practices of government, both as a whole and in individual units or created by individual leaders. Culture indicates what is desirable or unacceptable behaviour, becoming an invisible internal compass to an organisation or government, and the individuals within it. Although this can have positive results, bad examples are much easier to recall: for example, reports of a culture of bullying, harassment, disrespect to staff, partying, and macho behaviour in the Number 10 unit inside Downing Street.
Additionally, external forms of accountability can utilise transparent documentation and open discourse as forms of pressure to encourage accountability — this is an institutionalised role of the traditional media but can also be used by more ad hoc actors such as via protesting.
But as we can see from these examples, the presence of accountability mechanisms does not necessarily deter attempts to not be held by them. This means there needs to be close focus on whether accountability mechanisms are effective enough at both identifying undesirable actions and subsequently responding to them.
When accountability erodes…
The UK works much more on tacit, unwritten agreements and customs in government compared to, for example, the US’ more robust division of powers and system of checks and balances. This creates a much more agile government with enough centralised power that change can be more easily be driven forward rapidly, yet it also is a system that relies on its operators’ trustworthiness and competence.
Over the past decades, the accountability mechanisms contained within UK government have been tested and returned a patchy track record. In the wake of the large wave of strong criticism of the poor performance of the Conservatives’ last 15 years in power, it would be easy to simply say ‘There is no accountability, nothing works’. However, this neglects a more nuanced view which although potentially less immediately cathartic is perhaps more accurate. There is some accountability and some mechanisms work, but not as many or as much as needed.
By this, I mean that there are some mechanisms which have been either ineffective or insufficient, evidenced for example by:
- HS2’s long-winding saga of ever-increasing costs and decreasing train links (while also having negative effects on the environment and some local communities).
- Red flags were raised for 20% of ‘personal protective equipment (PPE) and other Covid response contracts in the UK worth billions of pounds were allocated in seemingly partisan and systematically biased ways’, according to Transparency International UK.
- Frequent and varying breaches of Ministerial Code, leading to the sense of no accountability for the highest figures in government.
- Long-standing recognised need to review political party funding and how the Electoral Commission oversees elections and regulates political finance. The latest example is that five of the UK’s six main political parties (all except Labour) failed to identify and block illegal foreign donations made on behalf of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
- The current ongoing election date betting scandal which the Gambling Commission and Metropolitan Police are currently investigating.
Nevertheless, the fact that these cases (and more) have been identified and brought to public attention shows there is not an absence of accountability. Rather, it is perceived as insufficiently proactive, rapid, or proportional.
Yet ineffective accountability mechanisms have eroded trust in government and its leaders. At the end of 2023, IPSOS found that trust in politicians and government ministers has fallen to its lowest level in 40 years, since recording began in 1943. Only 9% of Brits trust politicians to tell the truth; this is lower even (by 4%) than during the 2008 financial crisis and expenses scandal. Even more concerning is trust in politicians to tell the truth is as low as 2% among those aged 25–34.
When ineffective, accountability mechanisms can quickly erode trust within and outside the institution they are part of as they become an empty promise or even ways to deny accountability de facto (justifying actions by saying they have not been stopped by existing accountability mechanisms, even if these mechanisms are weak).
Looking forward: accountability in the spotlight
The need to renew accountability and trust in government has been well recognised by Labour in its campaign. In a section of their manifesto, Labour focuses on restoring public service and confidence in government including by establishing a new, independent Ethics and Integrity Commission to ensure integrity including holding ministers to account. Furthermore, they plan to crack down on the conflict of interest of ex-ministers lobbying for companies in industries they previously regulated, and increase powers to investigate misconduct. Restoring the ‘service’ in public service (as well as mention of various ‘resets’) has also been a frequent message in campaign media appearances.
Other actors also play a key role in restoring the integrity of government and its accountability systems. There has already been longstanding discussion over the need for media to provide greater rigour, analysis, and pressure on the government; plurality of voices and perspectives is an essential part of a democracy and the UK media needs strengthening and diversifying in order to effectively play its role. Arguably, the UK’s right-leaning media has not sufficiently challenged the Conservative government over the last decade and a half, potentially being complicit in either failing to challenge policy or even encouraging poor policy and damaging rhetoric to be pursued (e.g. Rwanda scheme).
Plurality also extends to Parliament, with the need for an effective opposition to the government being hotly debated already during the campaign once Labour’s strong lead in the polls showed little signs of shifting. Regardless of if someone supports the new Labour government, the role of the opposition is important for ensuring the governing party justifies their reasoning for policy. Plurality within political parties (including not over-whipping) is also important for this reason and to push the party further.
However, beyond ensuring the base level of integrity and trustworthiness of a government and its leaders, accountability also plays a role in the pursuit of goals within government. There are ways that political parties and leaders determine or offer what they can be held accountable for via the targets and pledges contained in their manifestos and political communications. For example, Labour’s manifesto pledges to create 650,000 jobs in the industries of the future and build 1.5 million homes — these are examples of quantifiable accountability metrics but, of course, qualitative pledges are also made in manifestos.
Accountability for ambitious action
Labour’s five missions are anticipated to be pursued by a new structure in Whitehall, forming five cross-departmental mission boards to enable more sustained collaboration and break silos. Although the detailed form of this will be determined in practice, this raises the question of how a government can drive towards more ambitious actions but also be held to account for what they say they will deliver, despite unknowns.
Missions, by nature, involve the investigation of how to address ambitious goals that you don’t already know whether or how you can achieve. There is a genuine need to learn new approaches to governing including how to promise realistic outcomes it can deliver while recognising the learning needed to find the route(s) towards achieving them.
New mechanisms for accountability will need to be built into the new institutions and practices that will support Labour’s missions. Based on current knowledge of how Labour will approach this, ideas to investigate that I would see include:
1. Goals and measuring progress
- Ensuring Labour’s five Missions have clear overall goals which are somehow quantifiable or comprehensible, meaning they are understood by actors essential for their delivery. Clarity is key for the public and media to assess whether the government is making progress.
- Ways to balance between this need to show tangible progress while also ensuring there is a focus on more complex learning and knowledge accumulation which cannot be captured in a one line sound-bite. This is the necessary other side of the coin that UK politics has been missing, having focused more on intentionally ignorantly, oversimplified messages and symbolic tokens of progress (e.g. the inflation of the symbol of ‘boats’ to be conflated with the entire, complex state of migration). Labour’s Missions require mechanisms to ensure progress on deeper, sustained learning isn’t neglected in favour of the political busyness of the present moment. Form indicators of progress (despite complexity and the need for space and time) will be key to ensuring the public, media, and opposition can scrutinise decisions.
2. Culture and leadership
- Rewriting the unwritten rules of culture to incentivise trying new approaches (and failing at some) for ministers and civil servants. Fear of knee-jerk criticism or removal from post reduces the ability to test different approaches at a time that we need them. Decoupling criticism from ‘failure’ of individual tests is not a simple task but even a moderately higher threshold for risk-taking would be beneficial. This involves shifting leaders’ accountability from solely results to also finding justifiable routes to test, as well as engaging deeper in the creation of a conducive culture of openness, creativity, and change within government. Finding ways to communicate and evidence the value of this approach to the public (including via clear goals and targets mentioned above) will be key to the reception of the early phase of Labour’s new government.
- As I argued in my recent piece on trust in government, the way we perceive the role of government and what we expect from them must evolve to reflect this. In addressing the complex challenges we face, we should hold governments accountable for creating the conditions for collective exploration rather than outcomes that rely on actors across society, not only governmental accountability.
3. Multi-actor, multi-level coordination and collaboration
- Labour’s Missions cannot be achieved from central government alone. In addition to mission boards facilitating the silo-breaking within central government, forming alignment and accountability systems from and to different levels of devolved and local governments will also be needed. The dynamic of this is also important to ensure a truly collaborative effort towards commonly held missions rather than an accountability system build on unwillingness, comparison, and multi-directional distrust between different levels of government.
- Similarly, unlocking the knowledge and resources of the private sector, civil society, and citizens will be essential for both driving collective action on Labour’s missions and gathering a broad evidence base for assessing progress and areas for improvement or adaptation, enabling accountability via both alignment and monitoring.
4. Storytelling and strategic communications
- All of the above require more than just the ability to tweak and operate the mechanics of government. In order to create and sustain support for their missions within different areas and levels of government, and among non-governmental actors and the public, the story of what they are trying to do will have to be convincing, compelling, and continuously reinforced.
- Furthermore, there is a time limit set for Labour’s story or message. In addition to showing strong evidence of ‘change’ and new vision during the first few months and years of government, there is also a strong need to ensure the story of their governmental term will be one of success. Even though there will inevitably be problems, setbacks, and unknowns, demonstrating accountable, successful delivery within this term will be necessary not only for a strong position on a potential second term but also to shift the current downward spiral of political culture and prove to the public that a different approach is possible. This story will need to balance inspiration with transparency on the complexity of addressing societal challenges if it is to be genuine.
These are some initial thoughts on the current approach laid out by the new government, but there is also a bigger picture. Accountability and the integrity that comes from its mechanisms being robust and successfully applied seem a little grey and mechanical but they are the hidden backdrop of successful governing which enables action to be driven forward in a way that balances political power to a needed degree.
Having spent more than a decade in accountability free-fall, it is time to create a turning point which can begin to rebuild trust in government and its leaders. This means restoring basic accountability such as over ministerial behaviour and fiscal responsibility, but also identifying and creating new accountability mechanisms to help guide and demonstrate progress on ambitious actions and missions.
For some of the societal challenges we are facing, such as on climate, action is not negotiable. Accountability plays a key role in not only ensuring governments act boldly, but also that they are in the position to involve other actors in society in the needed challenge exploration and hold them accountable also.
Furthermore, beyond the mechanisms of accountability itself, there is also another question of whether governmental leaders and civil servants have the capacity to fulfil the role they are being held accountable for. Labour’s new government needs to assess and address how to ensure government has the skills, practices, processes, mechanisms, institutions, and cultures in place to fulfil the ambitions they have laid out. There will be great pressure to have all of the answers overnight — an impossibility — but the first step is ensuring the right paths are in place which will enable government to learn and improve over time — both quickly and deeply.
