STATECRAFT

Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder studied 70 public organisations in 5 countries, interviewing over a thousand people, for this book. It shows how bottom-up driven innovation can achieve truly remarkable results - for small extra investment. Something surely of interest to the incoming British Labour Government - in fact any government. Listen to my fascinating discussion with them - including how...

William Eggers and Don Kettle's new book ' BRIDGEBUILDERS ' isn't the first to address the issue of how Governments can 'catalyse' problem solving on the big issues. But it's a great updating, and refining, of the issues, methods and pitfalls of 'Bridgebuilding'. With lots of fascinating examples. A worthy successor to ' Reinventing Government &apo...

The advertising for Al Roberts new book SUPERSTATES says "In this century, the world will conduct an extraordinary experiment in government. In 2050, forty percent of the planet's population will live in just four places: India, China, the European Union, and the United States. These are superstates – polities that are distinguished from normal countries by expansiveness, population, div...

There are not many* attempts to write a full, global, history of Government since its inception 4-5 millennia ago. Grant Duncan has written one which doesn't cover everything - but focuses instead on the ideas (and realities) of government from a more global perspective - starting with historical Chinese thought and practice. I hope our discussions captures some of his ideas - but it's w...

Graeme Garrad argues that for the past 40 years some governments have tried to 'roll back the frontiers of the state'. Although they succeeded in a lot of economic areas, they were much less successful at reducing the welfare state. Now Graeme sees the possible emergence of what he calls the "Public Interest State". Join us for a fascinating discussion. Graeme Garrard, THE RETU...

Traditional debates in political science about states and governments have focussed on fairly abstract definitions, usually starting from Max Weber's definition of the state as a “human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Paul suggests this is clearly inadequate to discussing modern states and in any case is a si...

In this short (12 min) episode I discuss how the UK Governments - plural - handled Covid. And especially how the Whitehall Government did - or mostly did not- coordinate with other tiers of Government Of which there are many more than you would think. This is part of my project to promote serious discussion around what is known as "multi-level governance" in the UK and beyond. This talk...

BUURTZORG is an innovative method for organising the delivery of human services. Starting in community nursing in the Netherlands, it has captured the majority of providing community nursing services there. In this initial exploration, I talk to Brendan Martin about the Buurtzorg philosophy and practice.

Sorry for the long delay since the end of series 1. I've been ill. But STATECRAFT  is back. And in this short intro I'll explain what I'm trying to do with the series. The first full episode - looking at the BUURTZORG method of organising the very topical issue of community nursing - will be appearing very soon (it's already recorded).

Prof David Howarth (Cambridge), explains his views on how the UK has not one but two 'constitutions' - in competition but also co-existing. You can read a short introduction to David's ideas here . David, like me, has  background in local government before he became an MP. He, like me, was always struck by the differences in the way local and central government work. Unlike me, he i...

This episode is a panel discussion about diversity in Whitehall. Both the diversity of civil service jobs and of civil service people. It is one of our regular special  episodes of the podcast with a panel of experts discussing developments in the Civil Service. This month the discussions is chaired by Jess Bowie , Co-Editor of Civil Service World. She is talking to Sonia Kahn who was SPAD (Specia...

Simon Kuper's new book examines the small group of mainly Eton, and definitely mostly Oxford, Tories took over the UK. Simon's book delves into the combination of public school, Oxford and especially the Oxford Union shaped this group and how they found their cause - Brexit. Which was, for them, about their right to rule. Simon's book is published by Profile Books (2022) and is a fa...

This is the first of a regular monthly "WHITEHALL WATCHING" sessions. The team for this episode is Sonia Khan (former civil servant and special adviser); Philip Rycroft (former Permanent Secretary); and Suzannah Brecknell (Editor of Civil Service World). In this episode we discuss the roles of Ministers, Civil Servants, SPADS and experts. Including reflections from Sonia and Philip on th...

Universities were hardly mentioned in the Levelling Up white paper published by the government earlier this year. Jonathan Grant and Andy Westwood addressed this gap in a paper they wrote for the Bennet Institute at Cambridge University. I talked to them about their concerns and ideas. Jonathan also published a book last year (2021) about the role of Universities: The New Power University . Pearso...

A lot of political commentary in the media assumes a certain basic knowledge of what's happening in elections. Sometimes I wonder if the media folk know themselves? Anyway, here is my simple, 5 minute, explainer of what the elections are. Let me know if you think its been useful.

George Arbuthnott and his colleague Jonathan Calvert, both of the The Sunday Times 'Insight Team', have written one of the most detailed accounts of the Coronavirus pandemic in the UK: FAILURES OF STATE (Mudlark press). In this discussion George details some of the terrible mistakes made by the Johnson Government over the past two years, which led to the worst death toll and the worst ec...

Adult social care has gone through several transformations since 1945. Bob Hudson's book CLIENTS, CONSUMERS OR CITIZENS (2021, Policy Press) analyses the last 40 years of the privatisation of adult social care provision. Before the turn to markets in the 1980s, provision had for a brief period been more like other welfare state services, but soon bagged to change under the Thatcher government...

To say the House of Commons is in something of a crisis would be an understatement. Dozen's of MPs accused of misbehaving, the Prime Minister being investigated for lying to the House and one MP even accused of watching porn in the Commons Chamber. Dr Hannah White's new book couldn't be more timely. So I talked to her about it. This episode is a little longer, but worth it. Hannah i...

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly threatened to "privatise the arse off" the Passport Agency recently for delivery failures at a Cabinet meeting on 26 April 2022. Which is somewhat ironic as many of the Passport Agency's functions are already outsourced to private providers. This is a reminder that debates are often driven more by ideology than pragmatic analysis of the fac...

Prof Pippa Catterall of University of Westminster talks to Colin Talbot about Partygate's wider context.  Read her LSE blog here: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/why-partygate-matters/

Tudor Rickards and I are both retired (emeritus) professors from the University of Manchester. About a decade and a half ago we were amongst the first academics at Manchester to start blogging - entirely by coincidence. Fifteen or so years later we have also both just started podcasting - also completely independently. We thought it might be worth having a chat about why we both decided to podcast...

This episode explores the various ways by which Prime Minister Boris Johnson might be held to account for the lockdown busting 'events' in Downing St. 

This is the first RED TEAM podcast. It's a very short intro (5 mins) to what I am trying to do with the RED TEAM podcast. Hope you enjoy it and come back for more. Colin Talbot Emeritus Professor of Government, University of Manchester