Mission-driven Government means raising our sights as a nation and focusing on ambitious, measurable, long-term objectives that provide a driving sense of purpose for the country.Labour Party Manifesto, 2024
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has for several years been telling anyone who cares to listen that it will be “mission-driven“. The population are now going to find out exactly what that means – good and hard. What they will discover, too late, is that (except for very limited exceptions which I will come to in due course) the last thing on Earth that anybody should want is a Government that has a mission. That is because a Government with a mission needs conscripts. And being a conscript is not a good position in which to find oneself.
The English political philosopher Michael Oakeshott helps us to understand all of this very succinctly. Human associations, he tells us, are almost always “enterprise associations” – they have purposes, however vague. Companies are supposed to make money for their shareholders. Sports clubs are supposed to win games. Fire brigades are supposed to put out fires. Church congregations are supposed to evangelise or worship God. The Terra Nova expedition was supposed to get to the South Pole. And so on.
Very often, an enterprise association will have more than one purpose (a sports club is supposed to win games but also to serve a role for the community; a church is about mutual support and socialising as much as it is about worship; the Terra Nova expedition also wanted to bring back an emperor penguin egg; and so on). But generally speaking when people bring themselves together into an organisation of some kind, it is in order to do something, or some set of things.
Not all human associations are like that, of course. The obvious example is the family. Oakeshott – a notorious womaniser and libertine – did not write much about that subject. His interest was in the contrast between enterprise associations and something which he called a “civil association” – an association which has no purpose, and which is joined together “solely in terms of the recognition (not the choice or the desirability)” of a system of law and a system for administering that law.
Such an association, in Oakeshott’s view, did not exist anywhere on Earth, and never had. But it was the only morally legitimate basis on which a state could be constituted. she State, for Oakeshott, only had the moral right to exist if it had no purpose, goal or objective; it could only be moral if it consisted merely of rules and a means for making, enforcing, adjudicating, applying and amending those rules. And it could only have a moral relationship with the population, it followed, if that relationship inhered only in the recognition on the part of the population that the system of law and legal administration exists and has force.
This may all sound very abstract, but it is of critical importance in understanding our current predicament, so let me unpack it. If the state has a purpose, mission, objective etc., then it obviously becomes one of Oakeshott’s enterprise associations. But the crucial point for Oakeshott was that, unlike any other type of enterprise association, the state is one which the individual cannot choose to join (one is simply born into it), nor choose to leave (except by actually physically no longer being within the state’s jurisdiction at all). One is stuck with things as they are.
And what this means, of course, is that, whether one likes it or not, one has to work towards – or at least not work against – whatever purposes one’s Government has in mind. One does not get to choose (to come back to Labour’s manifesto) whether there is, for example, a National Wealth Fund, or Britain becomes a clean energy superpower, or we get a young people’s mental health “hub” in every “community”. And nor does one get to choose even whether to abstain from participation in the realisation of the state’s purposes – because at the very least one’s wealth will be appropriated and directed towards those purposes, and one will very often be compelled, nudged, coerced or cajoled into otherwise taking part. One is not, then, in those circumstances, free. One has liberty only to the extent that one does not interfere with the state’s “mission”. And that is no liberty at all.
But Oakeshott was no mere knee-jerk libertarian. He was a making a subtler and deeper point. His concern was that, if a state has a purpose or mission, then that means the population is deprived of the very conditions of morality as such, as Oakeshott understood them. This is because the only option available for any individual citizen in such circumstances becomes obedience of whatever commands, obligations or precepts come from on high, in the name of whatever objectives Government has in mind. And that is not in fact to act morally: it is merely to pursue morality “as the crow flies”. It is to do somebody else’s conception of the “right thing”, on the basis simply that one will face severe consequences if one does not. It is to have one’s behaviour subject, as Oakeshott put it, to causes, rather than reasons. One is not, in such conditions, exercising choice on the basis of reflection on what is right. One is simply doing what one is supposed to, because one must.
This can be contrasted with the state imagined as a civil association. It will be remembered that the civil association, as Oakeshott described it, was a state which has no purpose, and which only makes, enforces, adjudicates, applies and amends rules. Clearly, coercion is not absent in such a state – enforcement of rules, after all, is nothing if not coercive. But unlike in the state-as-enterprise-association, it is a morally legitimate form of coercion, because it serves to preserve the sphere of moral choice for everyone. A society in which there are no rules is a society of might-makes-right, and that is, obviously, one in which there is no moral freedom either. Coercion in the civil association happens only on the basis of maintaining the social order necessary to ensure that there are rules of conduct which have any application at all, and that moral choice can in fact be exercised by everybody.
This puts Oakeshott’s conception of morality very close to that of Michel Foucault (not necessarily the first person to leap to mind when thinking of examples of moral philosophers). Foucault once said that “freedom is the ontological condition of ethics”. This is a French post-structuralist’s way of making a point that is fairly obvious when one really thinks about it: if one is not free, then one is not acting ethically, or unethically, because one has no choice. It is only if a person has the choice to do right or wrong, and chooses to do the right thing (or not to do the wrong thing) that he or she can be said to be exercising ethics. Otherwise, he or she is what Oakeshott called a mere “role-performer”. He or she exists only to obey.
Morality, then, is about choice, and Oakeshott labelled the state a “moral enormity” when it takes on the characteristics of an enterprise association, because when it does so it deprives the population of the most human capacity of all – the capacity to exercise free will in respect of what is moral. And in so doing, it not only sets itself up as moral arbiter, but reduces the human individual to a purely instrumental position – a tool for the achievement of the state’s purposes, rather than a soul with independent value in its own right.
We are all, I think, familiar with the feeling of being subjects of the state-as-enterprise-association. As Oakeshott was at pains to make clear, all states in modernity have at least something of that character – there is no pure civil association in anything like the terms he described. But that feeling is going to become particularly acute for those of us who live in Britain as Labour’s grip on power strengthens, because it is of course the Labour Party that always bills itself most forcefully as having grand overarching purposes into which the population will be conscripted. That, after all, is in essence what the Labour Party is for.
In my last post, I described that drive – to “deliver [the population] from the great anxiety and fearsome torments of free and individual decision” – as always existing at the heart of Labour Government, and used as an example the case of mooted capital gains tax on the sale of primary residences. But the news is now each day veritably packed to the gills with such examples.
Last week we learned, for instance, that Labour will be conducting a school curriculum review – led by somebody who once complained in print that the U.K. education system had an “obsession with academic achievement” – and that it will force every school in the country, whatever its status, location, history or pre-existing mission, to teach the same, centrally mandated curriculum. Whether a school is state-funded or fee-paying, religious or secular, an academy or a bog-standard comp, the curriculum and its objectives will be ineluctable – and the population will have to accept it. Since all schools will be teaching the same curriculum, the option for parents to send their children, if they so choose, to a school which has an independent set of values will be extinguished. The only option, to repeat, is to be conscripted into the national educational “mission” – and simply to hope that the people exercising choice on one’s behalf are wise.
And so what we have here again finding expression are the same, almost primal instincts which Labour politicians in particular always display: towards control, command and coercion in the name of achieving some social purpose or other, and against the freedom, responsibility and self-sufficiency which are the necessary features of moral autonomy. And the parents and teachers of the land will simply have to respond accordingly, through gritted teeth, whatever their own views about the rights and wrongs of education might be, whatever they think of the people in charge and wherever they think the interests of children really lie.
The tenor of the next Parliament is therefore well and truly set. This will, of course, not exactly be entirely out of keeping with what has been happening since 1997 in some form or other, and it is one of the great failings of Conservative Party rule since 2010 that at no point did any Government seriously grapple with the question of how big the state and its control over moral choice should be. To bring us back to the introduction to this article, the position in which we will likely find ourselves, perhaps in five years, perhaps in 10, will be one in which the state is bigger than ever before, and – much more importantly – its control over moral choice more commanding. We will then be well and truly within the scope of one of the rare exceptions I mentioned in my opening paragraph, in which mission-driven Government is actually desirable: it will simply have to happen in order to reconfigure the state towards the core function of maintaining a strong and secure system of law, and to force it into returning at least some matters of morality, freedom and respect to the population once more. That will be one hell of a battle, and whether we have it in us to form and elect such a Government is quite another subject; we will in any event in the fullness of time find out.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.
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There is a longing for the removal of liberty. Some people see it as removing clutter from their life. No more ponderings – they tell us and we do it. Surely it is obvious in the way people behave. There is much greater unifromity in terms of the way people speak. Obviously far more in how they think. And even the low culture allusions that have been around for a hundred years have become even more mindless. Surely it is a diminution of spirit in the same way that an ailing patient gives way to the care of those around them. I don’t see it as a philosophical matter it is more like the administration of a palliative care ward.
Excellent article. Many thanks.
But I think a part of this silly ‘Mission driven’ nonsense has been lifted straight out of the civil service bureaucracy where ‘clever clogs’ clerks have bought into another recent US management buzzword, ‘Mission Oriented Management’. It used to be called ‘matrix management’.
It is, essentially, another excuse for senior management to provide zero leadership, because ‘everyone is a leader’.
Errrr……no…….I mean then everyone would have to be paid the same….right?
Dobbie the House Elf there, looking the wrong way… of course…
Don’t let them drag you down into yesterday’s debate. At the moment the cutting edge is something else entirely. These periods only occur every few hundred years where more happens in a week than in a century. Grasp the entirety of the real situation no matter how stark. These are just silly people leading you up blind alleys because such a modus operandi has allowed them to function up until this point. You have to recognise the terminus.
They won’t heal the sickness none of them will. It starts with a group of people rescognising the sickness that poisons this country and then a sincere approach to remedying it. It isn’t a short term thing. The dark side has spent decades marching this country along a certain route. People are starting to get that now. Re-engineering it is another matter entirely. It would take the rejuvenation of the spirit. That is the only hope for our country. It can be done but it is a path that requires deep commitment and insight.
Well, well, well… Wonders never cease. Cheatle is actually resigning. Now that’s all well and good but what we need now are answers to many questions and prosecutions as a result of the epic hash job that was an actual assassination attempt where somebody did in fact get murdered;
”In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that, I have made the difficult decision to step down as your Director.”
https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1815763138278547500
But look who has refused to testify.
”The heads of the Secret Service, FBI, and Homeland Security have all declined to testify in the House on the shooting of former President Donald Trump.
The Trump assassination plot cover-up continues.”
https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1815754425668931638
Look at how gleeful and ignorant they looked before the King’s speech. Some ruling elite in their Versailles like enclave cushioned from anything serious. That is the way to understand this moment. Because food inflation is about to go through the roof. We had hardly any potato crop in this country and the Chinese have lost al of their first harvest of rice due to floods. And this wetness is likely to continue for 3-7 years given the size of the south pacific eruption. In Russia even bartenders and stevedores are talking about the coming pole shift. We seem to think that the future will be a return to normal. If you are a true Englishman then you will take stock of the whole situation.
Not too late so either we behave like zombies or a nasty force takes over by default. I am happy to be part of a group of people that stops that. Doesn’t matter to me about money or reputation. You need to declare it now and then a lot of other people will do so.
Right or wrong are meaningless concepts without some authority defining what exactly is right or wrong. For European societies and the states they crystallized into, this used to be God’s will as revealed in the bible or by his designated deputies in the church(es) and on the thrones. While individuals were free to decide their own actions most of the time, they weren’t free to have their own ideas of morality.
The purposeless secular state whose sole function is maintaining a strong and secure system of law is a fairly recent invention. The USA was probably the first in modern times, followed by the various French republics. This system was forced onto Europe in the course of two major wars establishing US military domination over it through a combination of forcibly dismantling more powerful central European states and joining them together in a ‘Snowhite and The Dwarves’ semivoluntary¹ military alliance where only the USA really spends $$$ on its military.
I’m not keen on the Labour state with a mission, however, I’m not particularly happy with the US dominated secular sex life sphere, either.
¹ While there was still a threat of a major landwar with Russia in Europe, Germany was required to maintain an army with a peacetime strength of 589,000 soliders whose mobilized strength would have been about 2 million. Since then, Germany has been prohibited of having a military force of more than 370,000 soldiers, comfortable less than major European powers like Greece (sarcasm).
Like when Jesus asked that dude to follow him and all he had to do was give up all he owned. People get a bit nervous about that.Maybe not just yet As if you actually own it anyway. If you look at the property laws in England you never really own it. This is a serious juncture do what you will.
Owning a few trinkets doesn’t count for dick.
Plenty of Englishmen that know that something is wrong. Like Dylan said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Throughout the general election campaign Starmer kept repeating that he was returning government to service. Service, service, service.
It may have been Dr McGrogan in a previous article who pointed out that though the King can say he’s a servant, as a king he isn’t a servant.
How does this notion of service fit in with a mission-led government? And in particular, with Labour’s idea of mission. Presumably service isn’t of the sort performed by a butler or housemaid. Are there services performed by state bodies that could effectively be described as a rentier class?
As service, whatever it is, is just as important to Labour as mission, can Dr McGrogan gives his readers some of his thoughts on what it might mean?
It may have been Dr McGrogan in a previous article who pointed out that though the King can say he’s a servant, as a king he isn’t a servant.
He’s no man’s servant. But that’s a claim going back to Frederick II. (of Prussia) who coined the phrase that the king would be the first servant of the state. That’s a difference to the original absolutist credo of Louis XIV., L’etat çe moi — I’m state and the state is me and whatever I want to do is the right thing to do in the interest of the state. That’s the king who is truly no servant and who’s therefore free to do as it pleases him. Frederick’s idea was that the king had a duty to work in the best interest of the state, regardless if he liked that or not. Which makes him a servant of the (abstract) whole.
15 out of 19 in the first two rows of the photo are women. As in the BBC, men are positively discriminated against.
Has anyone been listening to then for “several years”. Have they been saying that so long? Corbyn was leader until the day before yesterday and doubt he would have known what it meant any more than I do.
Mission = central economic planning and control – economic ruin.
It’s a Socialist Government. What exactly did those who voted for it think they would get?