Category: Politics (Page 1 of 3)

Thinking about the foundations of mission-led government

December 13, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

In the past week speeches from Keir Starmer, Pat Mcfadden and Georgia Gould¹ have painted a bold vision for the work of government. The Plan for Change is ambitious, rooted in missions designed to tackle the nation’s most pressing issues—from housing and NHS waiting lists to economic inactivity.

It is really good to hear our government talk up a positive, attractive narrative about the future they want for our country. Show me someone dismissing the combined story they’re telling and I suspect you’ve found someone choosing partisan tribalism over good faith engagement although, and perhaps more likely, they may just be someone understandably browbeaten by years of disappointment, frustration and hypocrisy.

Speaking personally I want to be optimistic. I really want to believe that mission-led government can make a dent in these seemingly intractable problems. And because I’m now working in a team directly tied to this one of the missions I’m closer than most people to what it means to translate these ideas into practice. But that means I can see a stark challenge: acknowledging the extent of the gulf between rhetoric and reality.

Praying for representatives: US edition

December 9, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

Over the last year Dave and I have been kicking around the idea of “Kingdom Democracy” (or maybe kingdœmocracy) as we try to encourage our fellow Christians to adopt a hope-filled, faith-inspired perspective on democracy and how we’re governed. We haven’t quite managed to write the book yet, but it has been brilliant to take things that we know in our bones and put them into words.

It’s also been a powerful exercise in challenging me to put what I believe into practice at a personal level. That led to my prayer walk along the boundaries of the Croydon constituencies, the election night prayer watch party, the time spent praying for every one of our new MPs and subsequently trying to turn that tool into an actual product called PrayReps at Code for the Kingdom BUILD.

I was hoping PrayReps would be online by now. It’s not there yet, although good progress made with the underlying data. Going back to work has definitely slowed progress. So, no product on the internet but I did repurpose my old locally hosted ChatGPT-assisted code for the US Presidential, Congressional and Gubernatorial elections. Now, with the final result finally being confirmed at the end of last week I can finally publish this blog post.

It’s a blog post in three parts.

A bustling street scene featuring several cars lined up on a road. In the background, the iconic clock tower of Big Ben is visible, with a blue arrow graphic indicating an upward trend in traffic or growth. The setting is illuminated by sunlight peeking through clouds, creating a lively urban atmosphere.

The pace of ULEZ compliance is slowing but still trending up

August 16, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series ULEZ

This is the fifth time I’ve looked at vehicle registration data in UK to see the extent to which private car owners are impacted by the expansion of ULEZ. I’ll probably do it once more to retrospectively see what the situation was at the time of the general election, and the former Prime Minister vowing to reverse one of the most successful policy interventions of recent years.

That last post, looking at the data until the end of December 2023, showed the total numbers of ULEZ affected private cars in London were 305,009 down from 552,198 in March 2022. What has another three months done to those figures?

We need more participation in policymaking, we certainly don’t need less

July 25, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 6 Comments

I started writing a comment in response to today’s essay by James O’Malley but it quickly became outsized so I’ve turned it into a blog post instead.

The source for that essay is a new whitepaper from Demos that offers up a roadmap for embedding greater public participation in national policy making. James isn’t a great fan of it and in making the URL for his essay “James vs Demos” he’s clearly writing from a place of provocation. But he’s not alone. It also drew the ire of several commentators on Twitter. What’s strange is that I think in different times all of them would have probably been at the vanguard of enthusiasm for greater openness and engagement from government, not less.

But I can sympathise with their point of view. Some of that is concern that such efforts simply create an open buffet for cranks and extremists to push their agendas because they’re the ones who show up. But overall I sense a tired frustration that the country is just really bad at delivering the things we need. And that the feeling is that the sclerosis in this aspect of modern Britain comes from inviting external voices into the process which delay and obfuscate from what needs to be done because they hold too much sway.

A good example of that could be that some of the ballooning costs of HS2 that ultimately led to its cancellation for the country as a whole coming from efforts to satisfy the concerns of certain local communities and residents. While on the flip side to that, the new government has rapidly pressed ahead with a number of energy initiatives with national (if not international) outcomes in mind that had been being held up by local objections.

But focusing on these issues is to absolve those who govern for their deficiency in leadership. We can say that in either case it’s been a face off between individuals and communities (bad) and government decisiveness (good). But that’s such a bad place for us to end up when it comes to thinking about the sort of society we want to live in and the sort of public discourse we want to engage with.

Can Labour unlock the value of the OECD?

July 11, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 3 Comments

Rachel Reeves has been quick to tell us that UK public finances are in their worst state since World War Two. As she pores over the bank statements to identify a subscription or two to cancel she might pause at the £900,000¹ we send each month to the OECD and ask what are we getting for that money.²

I hope she and the Cabinet get a handle on that a bit more quickly than their predecessors. In the summer of 2023 the UK Foreign Secretary was in Paris, chairing the OECD’s annual meeting of ministers. He gave a speech that basically said “Before this week I didn’t appreciate the breadth and value of the OECD”. Arguably, he was just praising the organisation with niceties but then again, the ministerial musical chairs of the last decade means it’s not wholly surprising if the value and scope of the OECD got a bit lost.

It’s easily done.

OECD data does crop up from time to time but neither UK politicians or UK media seem to pay too much attention to its work. Just this week the OECD published the latest edition of its Trust Survey. In Ireland there was a ministerial press release and some press coverage but in the UK, nothing. And yet there’s a huge amount to unpack from what it says (and what it doesn’t) including the headline that only 2 of the surveyed countries have lower levels of trust in national government than the UK³.

Five things I think about GDS, CDDO and i.AI moving into DSIT

July 10, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 5 Comments

If those acronyms mean nothing to you then this blog post is not for you. It’s written in response to the news that the Government Digital Service (GDS) and the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), and the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI) are moving from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) under the responsibility of Peter Kyle as the responsible minister.

At the OECD one of the things we would emphasise was the importance of a mandate and authority for providing leadership of digital government across the entire public sector. GDS was the poster child for this idea. Many countries have established their own Digital Government Units similarly located at the centre of government and operating in proximity to the country’s political leadership. In more than one country the digital function has been given even more prominence and made an extension of the President or the Prime Minister. This has been critical in ensuring that the agenda receives support at the highest levels and made a priority.

In the UK, GDS benefitted from Francis Maude as the Minister for Cabinet Office (MCO) with his leadership backing the wave of transformation through to 2015. Under his watch many of the things that established the culture for digital transformation bedded in. And then in 2015 there started a sequence of 12 MCOs in 9 years. Not many of them showed the same aptitude for leading digital transformation as Maude.

Along the way the clarity of responsibility for digital started to fray. Digital inclusion, some aspects of data, some parts of Artificial Intelligence, and some parts of digital identity moving over to what is now DSIT.

Re: The oddness of the political moment

July 9, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 3 Comments

At the start of June, James Plunkett wrote a piece called The oddness of the political moment. It is amazing just quite how quickly the atmosphere has changed since the election (I’d attribute a lot of how I feel myself to having prayed through Croydon and then for all 650 MPs in the last week) but the post remains very timely and insightful.

I left a couple of comments around accountability. One on the accountability of those elected to serve, and the other about GOV.UK and the policymaking process. David Durant said one needed to be a blog post, but I’ve done both.

1. Accountability of politicians

“…it seems increasingly clear we need people whose day job it is to care about the infrastructure that underpins accountability and the associated discourse…”
The oddness of the political moment, James Plunkett (07/06/2024)

When I decided to leave the OECD, a major factor was the stark disconnect between its stated mission of ‘better policies for better lives’ and the practical reality that means the organisation has to prioritise diplomatic niceties over accountability. I accept that my expectations are perhaps unreasonable. After all, the OECD isn’t an organisation designed, set up or mandated to provide accountability when a member mis-steps. However, you can’t have a ‘rules based international order’ if there’s no accountability against those rules.

I prayed for every single newly elected MP

July 7, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 6 Comments

A screenshot from a web application showing a hexagonal grid map of the United Kingdom completely filled with red heart icons, representing each constituency. At the top, it says 'Constituencies left to pray for: 0' on the left and 'Constituencies waiting for prayer: 0' on the right. In the centre, there is a message that reads 'You have finished praying for the 2024 intake of UK MPs.' Below this message is a green button with 'Amen' and a prayer hands emoji.

A different kind of party

Recently God changed my plans for election night and inspired me to spend my night praying for each constituency and every MP. So we opened up Boon Café and Zoom for a watch party focused on prayer over punditry.

After the polls closed and before the results started to come in we prayed and worshipped. I had planned to bring Post Its and give space to lament over policies and poor governance. But I forgot them. And that was a blessing. There was still space to mentally and emotionally clear our prayer decks without spending too long on the shortcomings of the past. Fixing our eyes on Jesus was a much better way to spend our time before the first result popped up.

When it did I was grateful to Philip Brown and Alasdair Rae at Automatic Knowledge for sharing the hex map in a number of formats. Every time we prayed for an MP we could add a heart to our A0 poster, as well as automatically to the web app I’d built with the help of ChatGPT and data from Democracy Club¹.

Migration in Christian Perspective: Notes

July 1, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

On Wednesday 19th June 2024, the Sanctuary Foundation hosted a half day conference at St. Mellitus College called “Migration in Christian Perspective”. With some of us gathered in person and many more tuning in from all over the world it was a fabulous afternoon of insight and wisdom drawn from the experience of some stellar thinkers and practitioners.

The materials from the event will come in good time (and I’ll link to them) but hope these notes are an encouragement or of value for others.

All these shared with the caveat that any of the mistakes and errors are down to my transcription and not the people speaking! I also didn’t take notes for every session so this is a partial record.

I’m excited for #GE2024, but not for the reasons you might think

June 26, 2024 / Benjamin Welby / 4 Comments

I don’t know what you’re thinking about #GE2024, or elections in general.

A lot of us are cynical and disdainful, perhaps to the point where politics is an active sore in our lives, and the lives of those around us. There’s plenty of reason why our feelings about government and governing should provoke our grief, rage and distrust.

A lot of us are apathetic. We’ve been disappointed too many times to keep seeing any merit or relevance to the whole exercise. Maybe it was a struggle to even read beyond the word “election” . If that’s us then we probably won’t vote. And nobody could lay any of the blame for that decision on us.

A lot of us still have some optimism about politics and policy, or at the very least recognise its potential for achieving particular goals. Some of us have active roles in a party. For others we might stick a poster in the window or an emoji on our socials. It could be that our commitment to our party or policies means overlooking the means so long as we achieve ‘our’ ends in battling an injustice and delivering an important cause.

I’ve worked in and around government for 15 years. That limits what’s possible in party political terms¹. But if you spend enough time with me then I will more than likely have tried to persuade you that it’s important for Christians to care about the quality of how government goes about its business.

It’s a core part of who I am. I have a recurring prayer that “those who govern the world would fall in love with the values of the King and His Kingdom”. I’m even writing a book with my friend Dave that’s intended to be an encouragement to Christians by offering a hope-filled, faith-inspired perspective on democracy and how we’re governed.

So that means I’ve been anticipating this election for a long time, and frankly growing ever more restless at the need for change. I can’t say I’m impressed with these last 5 years (or with much of several previous electoral cycles to be honest). Once the election was announced I was looking forward to the night of July 4th into July 5th as being one of enjoyable schadenfreude².

But then a couple of Sundays ago God challenged me in a moment when I was supposed to be listening to a sermon but was in fact being distracted by an email.

A different kind of party

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