How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't

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Dunt provides much valuable information about the extreme weaknesses of Westminster, which are not all widely known, and ideas for reform, but the book fails to express them with a clarity and resonance likely to arouse the popular response he seeks. The necessary changes are normal procedures in many countries with stable, successful governments, including Germany, the Netherlands, and the Nordic countries. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force tactical air controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and cannot recommend it enough for anyone that is interested in a truly surgical assessment of the reality in Westminster - with some wider implications for other contexts. This was the domain of the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, the man who didn’t realise Dover was important for trade with Europe.Scotland, by contrast, since devolution has developed effective scrutiny at the committee stage by a committee of expert MSPs. Do you feel weighed down by stress and pressure, held back by judgement and lack of opportunity, and critcised by everyone – including yourself? who have created a mass of serious, unresolved problems, including social care, the NHS, low productivity, as “successive governments…have failed to operate with anything even approaching basic competence. This book adds substance and reasoned perspective to our anticipation that successive governments are failing the British nation and its peoples.

It achieved some improvements before being replaced by the less effective Civil Service Learning Programme by the Conservative-led coalition government in 2011. This book dives deep behind the scenes of the political system in the UK and discovers how it actually works. The excellent thing about this book is that it sets out clearly and concisely what the problems in the system are and how to fix them.Ian Dunt is a self-declared “Liberal Extremist” columnist who contributes to the I Newspaper in addition to the “Oh God What Now? Interestingly his fundamental, but by no means his only, solution is proportional representation at general elections and indeed he makes a sensible case for this. Then, Thatcher rejected criticism of government policies and regarded all public service professionals as self-satisfied, inward looking, and out of touch with modern needs.

There's a lot that is valuable here: the identification of misaligned incentives, the descriptions of Westminster procedure, highlighting the positive role of select committees and, more surprisingly, the Lords. Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. It also created the House of Lords Appointments Committee which could vet nominations by political parties “to ensure the highest standards of propriety” and put forward non-party-political crossbench peers, at least two per year, to contribute expertise and experience. How Westminster Works and Why It Doesn't is, simply put, the best explainer of any political system I've read.

This has long been known to be heavily biased, notably against women which has been exposed in detail over time but is not discussed here. Imagine having three life-coaches who had been through the toughest mental and physical challenges; a crack team of problem-solvers who knew in their day job that one mistake could be the difference between life - and death.