Political Advice

Past, Present and Future

,

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781838604776
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica comparata

The continuing churn of political advisers in Donald Trump's White House serve as a reminder of the salience and relevance of political advice. Political Advice: Past, Present and Future brings several very different voices to bear on the problem of advice and influence; the distinction in so far as it is valid between political and policy advice; the two-way parasitism of adviser and advised; the nature and idioms of political advice literature; the changing (and sometimes unchanging) nature of expertise; the ever-pressing issue of access and exclusion; and how that is controlled. This volume of essays feeds into a contemporary concern, set in a wider historical context. Moreover, the volume treats political advice in an interdisciplinary fashion with contributions from classics and literature as well as from history and politics. The unique practitioners' perspective to the problem of political advice is brought by the contributions of politicians, political advisers and senior civil servants.

Chapter 1

POLITICAL ADVICE: PAST, PRESENT – AND FUTURE?

Colin Kidd and Jacqueline Rose

Political advice has often seemed to be the dowdy neglected sibling of its more glamorous relative, political leadership. Public attention to it began to grow as increasing tensions emerged (particularly during the Blair years) between the conventional career civil service and temporary civil servants, known as special advisers or spads. This alone might have justified a wider and historically informed exploration of the largely unsung phenomenon of political advice. In the intervening years, however, what was once a technical subject, of interest largely to academics and to those inclined towards the less showy inner mechanics of the political process, has outgrown this audience and become the stuff of daily newspaper reports, television news items, and broadsheet analysis. If spads have become the new normal, other political events such as the Trump presidency and Brexit have rendered advice even more contentious, so that within the course of three or four years the question of who advises whom about what has ceased to be a niche topic with little public traction. Far from being overshadowed by the advent of Brexit and Trump, political advice has become an even hotter topic.

During the run-up to the Brexit referendum in 2016, Michael Gove, one of the champions of Leave, denounced the pessimism of ‘experts’ who questioned the economic wisdom of leaving the European Union. The political turbulence which followed drew in the civil service and the advice it gives government ministers, with a great deal of Brexiteering polemic directed against individual civil servants such as Sir Ivan Rogers, who resigned from his post as the UK Ambassador to the EU, and Olly Robbins, not only Permanent Secretary to the UK’s Brexit Department but also Theresa May’s advance man, or ‘sherpa’, in her negotiations with the EU. Indeed, Theresa May’s special advisers Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, figures normally confined to the backrooms of Downing Street, enjoyed a very high profile during the first year of May’s government and were then blamed for the disastrous election campaign of 2017, after which Tory MPs forced May to sack them. More broadly, English populists – Nigel Farage of UKIP and the Brexit Party foremost among them – have publicly questioned the integrity of the civil service and its ethos of neutrality. The civil servant who is not for Brexit must be against it, a Remainer indeed, and should be sacked, runs the populist refrain. The backstairs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern class, whose fate in normal times is obscurity, has become a central part of the story. Indeed, when Boris Johnson formed his administration in 2019 he brought in as his chief adviser Dominic Cummings, who had masterminded the Vote Leave campaign in the EU referendum of 2016, and whose role in that campaign had been the subject of a Channel 4 docudrama Brexit: An Uncivil War, in which the part of Cummings had been played by the actor Benedict Cumberbatch. This appointment resulted in an unusual amount of media attention, some of it focused on Cummings’s particular preferences for Sun Tzu’s Art of War, game theory and super-forecasting as the basis for decision-making, and his antipathy to what he perceived as a hidebound and unimaginative civil service, which he referred to as ‘The Blob’. After Johnson’s election victory, Cummings called for radical changes to the functioning of Whitehall, and for more offbeat advisers and quantitatively trained civil servants to counter the hidebound and aridly conventional, arts-based advice supposedly proffered to ministers by the civil service machine. Here, the shadowy world of spads – once the elusive, unaccountable, behind-the-scenes influencers – merges with populist politics: in this instance a spad speaking for the people against the establishment. Spats over spads within Johnson’s government boiled over when, in February 2020, Sajid Javid resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer, refusing to accept a joint No 10-No 11 economic advisory team and stating in his resignation letter how ‘crucial’ it was for Johnson to have ‘people around you who can give you clear and candid advice’. Nor were advisers in Corbynite Labour exempt from attention, given criticisms of the influence of Karie Murphy and Seumas Milne on the party leader.

Political advisers and their modes of advice have now become a key ingredient in the story the media tells on both sides of the Atlantic. Not since the Nixon administration – when, engrossed by the Watergate scandal, the public became familiar with backstairs advisers such as Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Colson; and Nixon’s National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger became a global superstar – has the topic of political advice enjoyed such prominence in the media as now during the Trump presidency. Not only have there been a succession of curious appointments – not least of military men – and a relentless churn of White House advisers in key posts – but the media and Trump’s Democratic opponents have publicly questioned (like some of his fellow Republicans, more discreetly and anonymously) who was actually getting through to the President and whether the advice given was acted upon. One strain of commentary suggested indeed that Trump – holed up of an evening in front of the television in the personal quarters in the East Wing – was operating largely on the advice proffered by Fox News. Of course, the media also fixated on Trump as a leader. But in this case the leadership style of such an erratic figure inevitably raised questions about political advice. Who were his trusted advisers, and did they have the capacity to frustrate his otherwise untutored caprice? Conversely, on the other side of politics, populist Republicans asked whether their president had been captured by what they referred to as the ‘deep state’. Again the question was posed: who was really directing the ship of state? An elected if ill-qualified president or a leviathan bureaucracy whose proper role was to advise him, and otherwise to implement his decisions?

In the White House Trump also resorted to a traditional formula in the history of political advice, reliance – up to a point – on family members as gatekeepers and trusted counsellors, most particularly his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. It looked clannish and nepotistic, though there were precedents on a lesser scale from previous administrations, including the Kennedys and the Clintons themselves. Even Dwight D. Eisenhower, a punctilious military man, who took a highly formalistic view of counsel, had when in the White House utilized the advice of his brother, Milton Eisenhower, the President of Pennsylvania State University.¹ Trump’s reversion to the dynastic trappings of a traditional ‘court’ and his seeming addiction to despotic whim and caprice pose another perennial question in the annals of political advice. Can the adviser honestly speak truth to power? Or does the ruler prefer to be surrounded by flatterers and sycophants? Is loyalty in an adviser more important than honesty? Such questions, which have received intense public scrutiny because of the Trump White House, may nevertheless be perennial challenges rather than unprecedented problems – or, at least, episodic rather than unheard of. For, as we shall see, the court analogy is both revealing and misleading, and it is fruitful to think about what advising in a court might have involved.

If court-based advice has often seemed sealed off from the outside world, the rule of populists such as Trump and Boris Johnson brings to the heart of government – and into the focus of external media scrutiny – court-style politics tinged with an anti-expert populism. Does an elite cadre of economists, political scientists, environmental scientists, surgeons general, and chief medical officers really know better than the ordinary person in the street about the workings of the EU single market and customs union, climate change, and the place of vaccination in public health policy? In a democracy should this elite – however well-informed in its advice – frustrate the expressed will of the wider public? Shouldn’t the process of decision-making be left entirely to elected politicians who represent the views of the people?

The problem is that government is complex – indeed even in the ancient world was already so complex – that no leader can or could rule entirely on his or her own. Even if a leader were an Einstein rather than a Trump, they still couldn’t govern without consulting a whole phalanx of advisers. Leaders – even those who pose as strong men or strong and stable women – have never been able to govern on their own, without advisers or external fonts of advice, including oracles and other portents. Ever since the earliest formation of political communities the realm of political options has proved too complex for a single mind to comprehend or to navigate on its own. Indeed, on closer inspection some of the giants of political leadership turn out to have been the beneficiaries of brilliant advisers. Did Winston Churchill shape Allied success in the Second World War or was this undeniable political genius and master communicator guided towards the best strategy for victory by Field Marshal Alan Brooke and the advisers of his Imperial General Staff, who so often had to confront in Churchill a wilful and wrong-headed amateur general whose knowledge of grand strategy was at times dogmatic, perverse, romantic, and muddled? That is certainly the all-too-persuasive picture which emerges from Alan Brooke’s controversial wartime diaries.² Political leadership is the public face – in some ways a superficial frontage – of a complex process of advice and behind-the-scenes negotiation, give-and-take, and ongoing interchange between rulers and their advisers.

Whether in history or in politics the Alan Brookes have never, understandably enough, attracted the same degree of attention as the Winston Churchills. By looking first at the multifarious issues with which political advice intersects, then at discussion, analysis, and practice of it, first in the past and then in the modern United States and UK, this introduction shows the significance of the often overlooked role of advisers and officials. It is they who do much of the real work of the ship of state, not only manning the rigging, but sometimes doing the steering and – discreetly – helping to plot the course. And so they, not the leaders, are the central protagonists in this volume.

I

In some aspects of political life there is nothing new under the sun. What distinguishes political advice in modernity – at least until the last couple of decades – is its unexplored nature. Yet its central problems seem both distinctively modern and rooted in ancient patterns. Contemporary nuclear and environmental challenges may be unprecedented, but how far does advising in the modern military–industrial complex pose the same challenges as counselling in antiquity? Were earlier eras better at articulating and confronting the perennial difficulties of advising?

Take, for example, the crucial relationship between adviser and leader. The imperative to complement the decision-making role of leaders with the wider wisdom of advisers had, for much of history, a firm foundation in understandings of human nature. From ancient Greece and Rome stemmed the idea that the soul was divided into the passions, shared with animals, and reason, unique to humans. The exercise of reason over the passions provided the self-government that was the prerequisite for good governance of others. This inner psychological governance had an obvious political parallel: rational governors should exercise jurisdiction over the unruly populace. Down the centuries, monarchs could be presented as the rational element of the system – and yet as flawed (and, in a Christian framework, fallen) individuals they too were at risk of succumbing to their passions.

Even in the early modern heyday of the divine right of kings, between the late fifteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, there was a clear understanding that earthly rulers’ juridical omnicompetence did not come packaged with divine omniscience. Good and bad government was therefore organized along an unfamiliar axis, but one which provided a clear dividing line between absolute rule and arbitrary tyranny. The latter was understood in Aristotelian terms as monarchy gone wrong, i.e. rule by one person according to their private interest, whim, and will – it was not having too much power, but abusing it by not governing for the common good.³ Although usurpation was also treated as a form of tyranny, it was not the one that was most feared. Theorists of divine right or absolutism were obsessed with getting good advice because it was a sign of duly ordered monarchy and prevented tyranny. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, tutor to the Dauphin, wrote in the era of the Sun King Louis XIV that monarchy was sacred, paternal, absolute, and subject to reason – ordained by God, caring for its subjects, not to be resisted, and not to breach divine or natural law. Give me the advice you think best for queen and commonwealth, Queen Elizabeth I told her principal minister William Cecil, not that which adheres to my private will.⁴ In 1985 Sir Robert Armstrong, head of the Home civil service, quoted Elizabeth’s speech as summarizing ‘pretty well … what we still expect of our Civil Service and … what we still get out of it’.⁵

Back in the days of Queen Elizabeth I, two solutions could be found to the potential threat of tyranny, and counsel was inherent to both. One picked up the above strain of appealing to monarchs to govern well. Counsel helped supplement an individual’s imperfect knowledge and reason with a wider pool of wisdom, experience, and prudence. It was a supporting crutch as well as a virtuous safeguard. It could come from members of institutions – councils, parliaments, and estates – but also from courtiers, tutors, preachers, confessors, lawyers, merchants, and whoever seemed appropriate on the day. Government was limited, but by morality and God’s law, and by a small number of ‘fundamental laws’. But rulers who ignored good advice and broke such laws were to be punished by God, not by their subjects. The second method of engendering good advice was a constitutionalist route. This required rulers to consult a specific group of advisers, such as members of parliament, leading nobles, or a council appointed and vetted by these. This institutionalized limits on leaders, making them accountable on earth for their errors, and subject to external checks. The second option seems more obviously palatable in the twenty-first century, yet such are the dynamics of governance that rigid institutional requirements rarely produce the best or most effective advice.

The failure of institutionalized and enforced advice has manifested itself in multiple ways. The long history of attempts at restricting advice to groups of councillors who would be appointed or vetted by the nobility or parliament and to who...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 POLITICAL ADVICE: PAST, PRESENT – AND FUTURE?
• Chapter 2 WHAT WOULD PERIKLES DO, AND WHY IT STILL MATTERS – ASKING THE ANCIENT GREEK GODS FOR POLITICAL ADVICE
• Chapter 3 OBLIQUUS DUCTUS: INDIRECT POLITICAL ADVICE IN THE RENAISSANCE
• Chapter 4 HOW NOT TO DO IT: POETS AND COUNSEL, THOMAS WYATT TO GEOFFREY HILL
• Chapter 5 WILLIAM DAVISON AND THE PERILS OF ADVICE IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND
• Chapter 6 THE PARLIAMENTARY WAY OF COUNSEL
• Chapter 7 SMITH AS SPAD? ADAM SMITH AND ADVICE TO POLITICIANS
• Chapter 8 A MIRROR FOR PRINCES? BRITISH ORIENTALISTS AND THE PERSIAN QUESTION
• Chapter 9 REFLECTIONS ON THE CENTRAL POLICY REVIEW STAFF
• Chapter 10 ASTROLOGY AND ADVICE AT THE REAGAN COURT
• Chapter 11 YOU’VE GOT TO ASK THE RIGHT EXPERT: WHO GIVES POLITICAL ADVICE?
• Chapter 12 ADVICE IN A TIME OF BELIEF: CIVIL SERVICE IMPARTIALITY IN TWO REFERENDUMS
• Chapter 13 ADVISING TRUMP
• Chapter 14 MANAGING THE GROWING TENSION BETWEEN POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE: HARD CHOICES AHEAD FOR WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER
• Further Reading
• Index
• Imprint