GOODBYE SAJID JAVID

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GOODBYE SAJID JAVID

We will probably never know if Sajid Javid would have made a good Chancellor.  His brief tenure of the job from 24 July 2019 to 13 February 2020, combined with the effect of Brexit and the enforced General Election on the parliamentary budget, meant that he never managed to deliver a Budget – the yardstick by which Chancellors can be judged.

His resignation, reportedly because he refused to replace his special advisors with people more in tune with those in the Prime Minister’s office, suggests that he is too headstrong to have made a good Chancellor.  He himself described the prospect of acceding to the Prime Minister’s wishes as “no self-respecting minister would accept those terms”.  This has generated a great deal of press comment, mainly directed against the Prime Minister.  One that amused me is Private Eye’s front cover proclaiming “New Cabinet Announced” and featuring photos of 14 poodles each with a cabinet post listed under it.  But personally I think Mr Javid’s resignation astonishing.

It seems to be based on a premise that he believes that a Chancellor of the Exchequer should be independent of the Prime Minister.  Surely, that cannot be right any more than the Finance Director of an FTSE 100 company should be independent of the Chairman or the Chief Executive.  Special advisors are a comparatively recent phenomenon.  Their role seems to me to provide a counterbalance to the “institutional” views expressed to Ministers by their top Civil Servants.  There is some logic in that.  It is obviously also not unreasonable for a Minister to want special advisors whose advice he feels he can rely on.  But, subject to that, it is hard to see why No 10 should not want to be confident that the Chancellor’s advisors are in tune with the Prime Minister’s.  It is equally hard to see why a Chancellor should not want that too.  Although we will never know what went on behind closed doors, it seems unlikely that Boris Johnson said, “Sack all your advisors or resign”.  It seems far more likely that if Mr Javid had accepted the principle, there would have been some scope to negotiate on the people.

Of course if Mr Javid has no confidence in the Prime Minister’s advisors, that is different.  But if that is the case he resigned for the wrong reasons.  It is Mr Johnson’s government.  He is the only member appointed by the Queen.  He chooses his cabinet.  He should surely choose people he believes he can work with, because the business of government is a joint enterprise.  The Prime Minister ought not to be there to co-ordinate the separate policies of his Ministers.  The Ministers ought to be there to help to help to deliver the policies of Mr Johnson; they should govern from a common perspective.

This is particularly so of Chancellor and Prime Minister.  Indeed, there is no formal title of Prime Minister; Boris’ formal title is First Lord of the Treasury.  This suggests that he, not the Chancellor, has prime responsibility for the Treasury.  That is surely as it ought to be.  The principle role of the Treasury is to manage the economy.  But managing the economy ought not to be an end in itself.  The economy cannot be managed independent of the policies of the government.  It needs to be managed so as to enable the government to deliver its policies.  That means that, far from having the “first amongst equals” status that Gordon Brown in particular usurped for the Treasury, the Treasury’s role ought to be to help deliver the policies that other Ministers are pursuing.

I am not suggesting that the Treasury should be downgraded.  It is right that it is needed to temper government policies with financial realities.  But its role is not to challenge the government; it is part of the government.  It is not the most important part.  That is No 10.  But a powerful government surely requires that Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street work together.  Why else should there be an internal connecting door between the two?  And if a Chancellor is to use Special Advisors, working together surely requires that his Special Advisors are in harmony with the Prime Minister’s.

It is equally unreasonable to suggest, as much of the press has done, that, by acceding to this close working ideal, Rishi Sunak has revealed himself as too weak to be an effective Chancellor.  Weakness is not something that most people would ascribe to a Goldman Sachs alumni.  Working to deliver the policies of the Prime Minister and his cabinet is not weakness.  It restores the Treasury to its traditional role of financial guardian.  That is a crucial role.  I expect Mr Sunak to be able to meet its needs.

As an aside, I read something else recently that I found extraordinary.  Google is appealing a 2.4bn euro fine before the EU’s General Court.  The Irish judge on the panel apparently urged Google’s lawyer to imagine he had savings of 120 euro in his back pocket and was fined 2.4 euro for dropping some litter.  “Would you miss the 2.4 euro”, the judge asked.  I find that a strange notion of the rule of law.  His premise seems to be that Google has so much money that it should not waste the Court’s time over a 2.4billion euro fine, rather than challenge whether it had indeed done something that warrants a fine at all.  I find that an extraordinary concept.  He seems to be saying that justice should not be universal, if you are ultra-rich you should not worry about being unjustly fined, but simply pay up.

The fact that this judicial intervention has hardly merited any press comment as compared with Mr Javid’s resignation makes me wonder not so much what the role of the Chancellor is but what, if any, the role of the press is!

ROBERT MAAS