A spat has broken out in Westminster because the current chair of Ofsted is not having her contract renewed. She and many others allege this is because she is a Labour supporter and she is to be replaced by someone who is better disposed towards Tory ideals. So?
This is the kind of argument that the Westminster village loves and the voters who put them there regard as silly. To dissect this issue we need to look at Quangos, a post Thatcher phenomenon. Before her there were just ministries and men and women from ministries watching over public services and safety. There are various definitions of quango but according to the latest estimate of the Taxpayer Alliance, all told there are 957 of them, spending £82 billion of public money and employing 700,000 staff.
The idea of a quango is that it removes decision making from the taint of party politics and puts it in the hands of lovely people appointed by ministers and approved by a panel, also set up by ministers. This whole nostrum is ridiculous and the resultant bureaucracy and regulatory spider’s web rivals anything the EU has ever dared imagine. Moreover, as Euro sceptics, mostly in the Tory party which invented this preposterous system of public management, point out of EU arrangements, this is a wholly undemocratic model of governance.
In the context of the current argument it is irrelevant for whom these appointees vote, whether they are members of a political party and which one, whether they waste their money contributing to it and what they do on their days off. What matters is whether they can do their jobs.
That these jobs should not be done at all and we should return to a more seamless responsibility of public Ministries and the Ministers in charge of them, without all this Quango State, is the view of this Blog.