The three marks of a competent politician

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Good morning. I was going to write about the political pitfalls of the Conservatives’ approach over crime and immigration, but Robert Shrimsley beat me to it.

By a fortunate coincidence though, it is 40 years since Labour MP Harriet Harman was first elected to parliament in the Peckham by-election. She celebrated the occasion last night at a reception at the Speaker’s residence in parliament alongside politicians, including former prime minister Theresa May, her past and present aides and a smattering of journalists. I was among the crowd.

One of the things I want to do with this newsletter is explain how politics really works. So I thought it was a good opportunity to write about what it takes to really leave your mark on Westminster and Whitehall.

Inside Politics is edited by Georgina Quach. Follow Stephen on Twitter @stephenkb and please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to insidepolitics@ft.com.

There’s a Harman, waiting in the sky

A long time ago, I was an assistant to Ben Brogan, the Telegraph’s then chief political commentator, working on an email not unlike this one. Ben was heading off on a reporting trip, so I was left alone with the briefing. For some reason I decided that the really important thing to ask him before he left was which politicians he thought were doing well and worth watching.

He reeled off a lot of people, but two names stick in the mind. One was Theresa May — he said she was the overwhelming favourite to become the next prime minister. (This was at a time when the consensus that the most likely person to become the next prime minister was Ed Miliband, or failing that, George Osborne.)

The other was Harriet Harman, who, he pointed out, had done more to reshape the Parliamentary Labour party (and, indeed, the Conservative party) than any other politician.

Both May and Harman have a big political project in common: the task of increasing the number of women elected. Harman has done this by campaigning in parliament for family-friendly working hours and for changes to the Labour party rule book. Meanwhile, May co-founded Women2Win with the Tory peer Anne Jenkin. (Marking the link between the two politicians, May was one of the guests at Harman’s reception.)

As Harman reminded guests, there will not be a 50th anniversary party, as she is stepping down at the next election. The biggest visible legacy of Harman’s time in politics is that a third of sitting MPs are now women. When she was elected, she was one of only 17 — 11 Labour, eight Tory MPs. Now a majority of Labour MPs are female. But she also has an abundance of policy achievements. The most significant of those was also the last major piece of New Labour legislation: the 2010 Equality Act, which consolidated and built on previous anti-discrimination laws.

Often when journalists describe a minister or politician as “competent” we mean one of four things. The first is that they are someone who regularly answers our phone calls and that we would like them to continue doing so. The second is that they ignore our phone calls and we would like them to stop. The third is that they are boring and we assume, therefore, that their promotion cannot possibly have been a result of their magnetic personality or their factional strength. The fourth is that they are actually competent.

What does it mean to be competent? That’s a long question, but there are three things that I think typified Harman’s success that have broader lessons for British politics.

Politicians should have clear and defined projects: as Andrew Hill explains, evidence shows that, in reality, managers can only effectively manage about 18 people at most. Anything else is outside their “span of control”. When politicians run a team or an organisation bigger than that, their effectiveness comes from setting clear positions about what it is they want to achieve. Their officials and advisers can then follow this.

This ability to set clear objectives is one reason why Nadhim Zahawi has been an effective minister. He attracts rave reviews not only from Conservative colleagues, but also from his officials and the various Labour metro-mayors who had to deal with him during his time at the Cabinet Office.

The importance of picking projects is even more true for advisers: one reason why special advisers like Andrew Adonis, Alison Wolf or Louise Casey have managed to be effective is by having single obsessive priorities that are either shared by their politician or they are able to convince their politician to share.

Harman has had a laser focus on a number of projects: increasing the number of women in parliament has been one, but passing the Equality Act during the death throes of the last Labour government was another.

Politicians should draw on expertise from their wider network: Harman saw herself as the product of the women’s movement and most of her policy projects drew on that. You can do that through your advisers.

In a piece for policy research agency Public First, the former Conservative adviser Rachel Wolf explains that she was able to add value to her role in Downing Street through knowing school heads and education leaders.

“Stakeholder management” is an ugly phrase but if you don’t have that worm’s eye view of and understanding of the policy areas you’re looking to change, you’re likely to struggle.

Politicians need to be able to inspire loyalty: one of the few politicians to emerge from Liz Truss’s “mayfly premiership” with an enhanced political profile is James Cleverly. The perception that he was on top of his brief made retaining him as foreign secretary a win-win proposition for Rishi Sunak: he kept a cabinet minister in place who could do the job, while also winning over some Boris Johnson loyalists who might otherwise not have been.

Why did so many journalists and politicians write and say that Cleverly was an effective foreign secretary? Because civil servants and officials told us so! He did a great job at the FCDO of succeeding (where Liz Truss and Boris Johnson failed) in convincing his officials he knew what he was about.

Cleverly may end up being an ineffective foreign secretary, but a crucial part of being a good foreign secretary is remaining one, and he would not have done so had he not been able to inspire loyalty. A big part of why Harman was able to pass the Equality Act was because she inspired loyalty and affection among people. Indeed, the main reason she was able to bounce back from her sacking in 1998 was because one of those people was her prime minister, Tony Blair.

Those aren’t the only ways to be an effective or competent politician, but they are crucial to Harman’s success. I hope to return to other ways that politicians can be competent, using other case studies which arise as the various MPs looking to stand down at the next election similarly mark their exits at a later date.

Now try this

I meant to go and see All Quiet on the Western Front last night, but I was feeling stupid and lazy, so instead I saw Black Adam.

I’m not going to pretend that it was high art but Dwayne Johnson really is a brilliant leading man when you’re in the mood for a disposable but fun blockbuster. I certainly wouldn’t encourage anyone to cancel their plans to see it, but if you want to have a good time at the pictures with a drink and some popcorn you should give it a whirl.

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