Last week was a lot of fun for Westminster watchers. A more extensive than expected reshuffle provided wonderful entertainment for politics geeks, if not for the 29 ministers who were shown the door (or who rushed for the door hurling curses and imprecations behind them).
But what does it all amount to? Not as much as the Prime Minister might hope, says Chris Dillow on his Stumbling and Mumbling blog:
This is more than just a sporting analogy, says Mr Dillow. Evidence from other professions shows that the performance of managers "tends to deteriorate after they change firm":
The concept of organisational capital is particularly relevant to the business of government, where by far the most powerful organisation present is not that of the Prime Minister and his allies, but that of the civil service:
No doubt there are circumstances when the rule of the "Sir Humphreys" is good thing; but when a nation is so in need of institutional renewal and political leadership as our own, institutional inertia is an overwhelmingly bad thing.
None of this is to say that this Government hasn’t made progress in certain areas – for instance, on welfare reform, education and decentralisation. However, in each case, ministers have succeeded despite the system, not because of it.