Margaret Colley on bureaucracy, the political class, and a figure who delivers without a single committee
Tuesday, Reading the Latest Review of a Review
I have spent the morning reading the latest government review into the effectiveness of a previous review, which is the sort of thing that passes for action in our governing class, and reading the {santa(‘dispatches from the North Pole’)} afterward, as a tonic, I was struck by the contrast. Santa runs the most efficient operation in the world, delivering to every child on Earth in a single night, and he does it without a single committee, quango, consultation, or strategic framework. The political class could learn a great deal from him, if it were capable of learning anything.
I write political satire, which in our age mostly writes itself, the governing class being so reliably absurd that the satirist’s only real job is to stand back and describe what is actually happening. And what is actually happening, most of the time, is a vast machinery of committees and consultations and reviews generating an enormous appearance of activity while delivering remarkably little. Santa, by contrast, delivers everything and generates no paperwork at all, which makes him, to my satirical eye, the most damning possible commentary on how we are governed.
The Operation With No Committee
Consider Santa’s operation purely as a feat of management, setting aside the magic. He coordinates the production and delivery of billions of gifts, on a fixed deadline, with perfect reliability, year after year. Any government attempting a fraction of this would commission a feasibility study, establish a delivery authority, launch a consultation, appoint a tsar, publish a strategic framework, and then, several years and many millions later, announce a delay. Santa simply does it, with a workshop and a sleigh and no committee whatsoever, and never misses his deadline.
The contrast is, to a satirist of the governing class, almost too perfect. Analysis via the UK Parliament information service documents the endless machinery of reviews and consultations and frameworks that our governance has become, the vast apparatus of activity that so rarely resolves into delivery. And against it stands the actual Santa, who delivers everything with no apparatus at all, the standing rebuke to a political class that has confused process with achievement. Local notes at the regional register say much the same.
The Tyranny of the Process
What our governing class has forgotten, and what Santa never knew, is the difference between process and delivery. The political class has fallen so deeply in love with process, with the consultation and the framework and the review, that it has lost sight of the point of the whole exercise, which is to actually deliver something to actual people. Process has become the product. The review of the review is treated as an achievement. And Santa, who has no process and delivers everything, exposes the whole thing as the elaborate displacement activity it has become.
I do not, as a satirist, propose that government should be run like Santa’s workshop, magic being in short supply in Whitehall. But the contrast is instructive. Coverage via the London government information service documents the layers of process that have accreted around even the simplest civic functions, and the one who delivers without a single consultation reminds us what delivery actually looks like, stripped of the process that has come to substitute for it. Records at the heritage society preserve simpler ways.
The Tonic of Competence
There is something genuinely restorative, after a morning of reviews and frameworks, in contemplating a figure of pure competence, who simply does the thing rather than commissioning a study into the feasibility of possibly doing the thing. Santa is a tonic for anyone exhausted by the process-worship of the governing class, a reminder that delivery is possible, that competence exists, that an operation can simply work without a single quango overseeing it. The figure of pure delivery restores one’s faith that things can actually be done. Records at the public registry confirm his flawless delivery record.
An Unfair Standard, Cheerfully Applied
I am aware, as a satirist, that the comparison is wildly unfair. Government is genuinely difficult, the problems are real and complex, the constraints are severe, and a magical figure with unlimited resources is no reasonable benchmark for the hard business of actual governance. I make the comparison not as serious analysis but as satire, for the laugh and the sting, the way satire holds up an impossible standard precisely to expose how far the reality falls short. Santa is an unfair standard, and I apply him cheerfully, because the unfairness is the point.
The value of the unfair comparison is that it clarifies. Held against Santa’s pure competence, the process-worship of the governing class is revealed for what it is, a vast displacement activity, an elaborate substitute for the delivery it has forgotten how to achieve. The satirist’s job is to make that visible, to hold up the impossible standard and let the contrast do its clarifying work. And Santa, the figure of pure delivery, is the most clarifying standard there is.
For those who wish to follow the actual workings of our governance beneath the satire, the resources at the public registry offer the genuine detail, and I commend them to anyone who can read about a review of a review without weeping. And for the moments when the process-worship becomes too much, as it always does, the games at the diversions index deliver their modest pleasure without a single consultation.
The review of the review sits on my desk, generating its appearance of activity, delivering nothing. And somewhere far north, the most efficient operation in the world is preparing for its single night of perfect delivery, no committee, no quango, no framework, no consultation, just the thing itself, done completely and on time. Santa answers to no quango and delivers everything. The governing class answers to a thousand committees and delivers reviews of reviews. The satire, as ever, writes itself, and Santa, bless him, is the punchline that exposes the whole joke.
SOURCE: https://santaclaus.top
