The Brits need a better handover process
It’s not uncommon for American politicians to look affectionately at the machinery of British government. There have been many proposals to adopt a presidential version of Prime Minister’s Questions, for example, what Nigel Farage yesterday called (in his first speech to the Commons) "global box office politics".
Presidents Carter and Clinton were fond of the idea, and John McCain said if he were President he would ask Congress for permission to be grilled “much the same as the prime minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons." (The late senator never got his wish, but PMQs is still broadcast to millions of Americans via the television network C-SPAN).?
Now, as Keir Starmer assumes office without a moment’s rest from campaigning, perhaps it’s time to reflect on whether Westminster and Whitehall could take a page from Washington’s book.?
Jumping on a moving train??
Every four years the US presidential election is held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, but newly elected presidents aren’t sworn in until January 20th (members of Congress start slightly earlier, on January 3rd).?
The initial rationale for this hiatus was to allow enough time for all votes to be tallied and for incoming presidents to move residencies, which was no small feat in pre-industrial America. Technology has slashed the time it takes to do both, which is partly why the January 20th start date, established in 1933, is actually a revision from the original inauguration date of March 4th.
But there's another reason for the transition period: it gives incoming administrations time to prepare for the monumental task at hand.?
Formally this means access to federal funds, government buildings, and, at the discretion of the sitting president, the highly-classified President’s Daily Brief. The president-elect can also create dozens of “agency review teams” to coordinate with civil servants and learn the ins and outs of each department.?
As Professor Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, told The Washington Post, “when a president and his team come in, they’re jumping on a moving train. The government operations don’t stop—they continue, and you want to know what’s ahead.”
With immediate effect
Government operations don’t stop in Whitehall either, and yet the UK has no such gap—the incoming prime minister and his or her government must start work immediately. Wouldn't it be better if the UK adopted a US-style handover process?
In many ways, the American and British forms of government are fundamentally different. Most notably, the US doesn’t have a parliamentary government but rather a formal separation of powers under its constitution (this is why American columnist George Will detested McCain's proposal for PMQs, writing that “Congress should remind a President McCain that the 16 blocks separating the Capitol from the White House nicely express the nation’s constitutional geography.”) The US also has a lengthier confirmation process for senior government appointments, which in the UK simply requires a phone call to Buckingham Palace.?
But despite these structural differences, the American system still has the advantage of allowing for more preparation.
Perhaps nobody has studied this more closely than Sir Peter Riddell, former director of the UK’s Institute for Government and Washington bureau chief at the Financial Times during the Reagan-Bush transition. Riddell, who kindly gave me an hour of his time, says the US system allows opportunities for officials to be briefed, whereas the disadvantage of the UK system is that it’s “instantaneous”.?
Well-rested, well-briefed
Preparation is important to Riddell, whose book 15 Minutes of Power: The Uncertain Life of British Ministers details how surprisingly common it is for ministers to arrive on the job as unqualified as shows like Yes Minister and The Thick of It suggest. He spent much of his time at the IfG trying to solve this problem by hosting seminars for opposition politicians on the practicalities of running a private office and managing civil servants.
“The qualities which serve well in opposition don’t always work in government,” he says. “What makes someone a good attack dog in the House of Commons isn’t necessarily someone you want running a department.”?
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Riddell says this problem is exacerbated the longer the opposition has been out of power: the more time elapses, the less likely frontbenchers will have any government experience. Starmer's cabinet, for example, is the second least experienced since 1945 (Labour has been out of power for over 14 years).
This issue is avoided completely in the US since department heads are drawn from a much wider talent pool and therefore tend to have more experience. Robert Gates, for example, served as US Secretary of Defense for over five years spanning Democrat and Republican administrations.??
Lack of experience isn’t the only reason why an incoming government can get off to a bad start, however. While Biden and his team could rest after their election victory in 2020, British Prime Minister's must begin work utterly depleted from campaigning. Notwithstanding the mystique of Margaret Thatcher’s ability to function on four hours of sleep, most would agree some rest is better than none. As Bernard Donoughue, former assistant to the Labour prime minister Jim Callaghan (who took regular naps) argued, “better well-rested than well-briefed.”?
Measuring the curtains
But even well-rested and well-briefed opposition leaders are still prone to be ill-prepared, Riddell says, because no matter how much they may have mentally rehearsed what they would do in power, they still tend to shy away from any formal planning.?
“Invariably it’s true that they don’t want to tempt fate,” he says. “They’re afraid of measuring the curtains because if it leaked out that they were so presumptuous, voters would say ‘hold on, this is our decision, not yours’.” Incoming governments are therefore likely to begin their work having failed to devote sufficient thought to either their personnel or policy priorities.?
Fortunately there’s a convention by which all these issues can be avoided: the “Douglas-Home Rules'' allow opposition leaders to meet with senior civil servants up to 16 months before an election. The convention derives its name from the late prime minister who turned a blind eye to Labour deputy leader George Brown meeting with Treasury officials about his party’s plans.?
But while this pre-election contact can in theory smooth a transfer of power, Riddell says it’s highly discretionary: it’s ultimately up to the prime minister of the day whether to authorize the cabinet secretary to hold such meetings.?
In a 2009 IfG report co-authored with Catherine Haddon, Riddell also argued that pre-election preparation is fundamentally constrained by two factors:
This uncertainty, the report says, leads to civil servants often having to guess what opposition proposals mean, or work on the basis of either indirect contacts or manifesto pledges “intended as much for internal party or electoral consumption as a programme for government itself.” So the Douglas-Home workaround, while nice in theory, doesn't always work in practice.
A global outlier
Should any future Prime Ministers wish to address these problems, the US is not the only model to emulate. In fact, the UK is unusual in its immediate transfer of power and can look to most developed democracies for inspiration.?
Australia, for example, goes into “caretaker mode” during a handover period whereby the existing cabinet, abiding by certain conventions, is maintained until a new government is formed (effectively an extension of the strictures that already apply to a UK government in "purdah": the pre-election period when civil servants must remain politically impartial).?
In Canada, the cabinet secretary has formal responsibilities around preparing for a transition, and there are a few days’ grace between when polls close and a new government assumes office. Riddell would like to see this grace period in the UK as well, to allow the incoming government to switch from campaign mode to governing mode, and, if nothing else, “to get a good sleep”.?
Even within the UK local councils have much to offer for the openness with which opposition councillors and officers collaborate, and the amount of training that incoming councillors receive. ?
And, of course, the US has something going for it. Incoming presidentital teams practice what they’ll do in the first days and weeks in office, prepare for contingencies, build relationships with civil servants, and learn, at least in part, how to navigate the labyrinth of Washington bureaucracy.
The UK could adopt any one or a combination of these measures to help bypass the pitfalls of immediate transfers of power.?And it should. At a time when the challenges faced by governments are of ever-increasing importance and complexity, Britain's ruling class can learn a thing or two about how to more effectively pass the baton.