Policy for Campaigns 06: Policy for a new government

What does it mean for your policy work when the government changes?

When a new government takes office, what does it mean for your policy work, and for your campaigns?

Firstly, as ever, we need to define our terms, as the question of what constitutes a change of government can be surprisingly muddy. The fundamental rule is that the government changes when the Prime Minister changes. In the UK, a Prime Minister is invited to form a government, so it is the identity of the Prime Minister that defines the government (although technically it is not the PM’s government, but Her Majesty’s).

Confusion arises when people start talking in terms of parliaments and general elections: if an incumbent PM wins a general election, does that mean that what follows is their second (or third, fourth, etc.) government? No, it doesn’t: the key here is to understand and remember the concept of the separation of powers. The legislature (parliament) is one branch of the constitution, while the executive (government) is another, and they are not the same thing. Creating a new parliament (by holding a general election) is not the same as creating a new government.

So, there was one Tony Blair administration, from 1997 to 2007; the fact that three parliaments were elected during that time doesn’t mean there were three Blair governments. Informally the periods defined by general elections might be referred to as “terms” of office, but this is only really useful as a political shorthand, and is constitutionally misleading. The last PM to have a true second government was Harold Wilson, who left office in 1970 and returned in 1974. The habit of talking about the first, second and third Blair governments (and so on) appears to come from people who have studied nineteenth century politics and have the multiple administrations of Gladstone, Disraeli, Salisbury and so on (all of whom left and resumed office as Prime Minister at various times) in mind. Don’t fall into that trap.

Changes of government nonetheless come in two basic flavours: one is when a new party takes office in a general election, changing not just the Prime Minister but the entire political make-up of the government; the other is when the same party continues in office, but with a new leader and therefore new Prime Minister. Most new governments are formed in the latter way: I’m a middle-aged man and there have been only two bag-and-baggage changes of governing party in my lifetime, so they are rare events. By contrast, five Prime Ministers have formed governments by succeeding an incumbent in the same party during the same period (counting the succession to Boris Johnson).

This article will look at the more common scenario, of a new PM taking office without a general election or change of governing party. I’ll come back to the other scenario in the future… probably some time in the next two years.

Change of Prime Minister

There will definitely be some public affairs considerations when a new government takes office – that is, the work your organisation does to develop, manage and utilise relationships with key decision-makers and third parties, which is distinct from policy work although obviously the two go together. Not only will the Prime Minister change, but the chances are that any Secretary of State or junior ministers you deal with, or whose policy briefs are relevant to your work, will change too. Indeed, these ministerial changes will often be the most directly relevant aspect of the new government, and if your organisation has any interactions at ministerial level you will probably be sending one or more letters of congratulation. The considerations for a change of government are, on that level, not very different from those for a Cabinet reshuffle.

However, is a change of ministers likely to have any implications for the substance of your policy work, or require any kind of policy response? It’s unlikely to be as significant as a change of governing party would be: the broad approach and emphasis of the new government probably won’t be very different from its predecessor. The change in 2019 was a slight exception to this, as it brought a sporadically greater willingness to depart from fiscally conservative orthodoxies. There may also be a marked change from September 2022, although this may be driven more by the ballooning crisis in domestic policy as a whole than by the actual change of government, which in more benign circumstances might have exhibited more continuity with its predecessor.

But other things being equal, the implications of a change of government will depend on the level your organisation operates at. Is it a large or high profile organisation that regularly interacts with ministers, or secretaries of state, or even the Prime Minister? Or does it work at a more technical level with officials, and/or do its ministerial-level representation on alliances and coalitions? Related to this, but not necessarily entirely the same, is the question of what level your organisation’s issues get decided at: does it deal in big-picture stuff like NHS funding and structures, or more technical things like fire safety regulations? As we’ve seen, the latter, or sewage monitoring, or whatever, can find its way to ministerial desks and even national headlines at times, but in your day-to-day work it often won’t be there.

So, what to do? It will be worth taking stock of the current state of play with your policy issues, and identifying any where work is being progressed at or towards ministerial level, and items you’d like to get there. As well as identifying those, consider the policy background and outlook of your new minister/s. If they have taken particular positions or shown particular leanings that are relevant to your issues, you may need to advise your organisation on what this implies: is an opportunity opening up, or is danger looming? Equally, if they are a blank canvas where your issues are concerned, identify that too.

Armed with that information, consider your options. Do you need to re-assess your priorities, for example? Maybe there is an opportunity to make progress on an issue that had previously looked hopeless, and it needs to be bumped up your priorities. Maybe something that had looked ripe for progress is now much less promising. Or maybe a success that you had made strides towards with previous ministers now looks in jeopardy. You need to be able to inform your organisation about the significance (if any) of the ministerial changes in terms of the substance of your policy issues.

From there, policy needs to feed in to public affairs and campaigns work, where there will be some standard enough things to try. These may include initial letters of welcome and introduction, either in your own right or in collaboration with other organisations if you’re in a crowded field: the policy arguments need to be developed, and tailored to the new minister.

If you’re grappling with an entrenched determination not to change policy, getting to a new minister nice and early may offer an opportunity to prompt them to question the unhelpful departmental (civil service) line, . The Grenfell inquiry testimony provides a lot of insight here: it identified how new ministers’ inductions were spread out over several weeks and multiple sessions, and the fire safety issues that were ultimately crucial to causing the fire were at the bottom of the list, and often poorly covered. From the outside, you have no way of knowing whether your organisation’s issues are high or low in the running order for inductions (though you may be able to guess from how responsive the department generally is to you). If you can get your line into the new minister before the departmental one, you could get some movement on a previously stubborn issue – but you will have to have a sharp public affairs operation in order to achieve that! (Approaches like identifying a constituency-level link to the minister, for instance if they’ve helped one of your members as a constituent, can be a good tactic here.)

The reverse of this situation is when you had had a good relationship with the previous minister and they had made some firm commitments that haven’t yet been delivered on. You need to make sure the new minister knows about these, and emphasise how welcome they are, to try to get the new minister to resist the temptation to start again from scratch themselves.

Also, consider how ministers work – and particularly Secretaries of State. It is standard advice for Secretaries of State in particular is to have (at most) two or three priority issues, and focus proactive efforts on them. Keep an eye on what new Secretaries of State signal their priorities are, and evaluate whether they will have a bearing on your issues, directly or indirectly (which might involve them displacing a predecessor’s priority that was particularly important to your organisation). If your organisation has the necessary standing to write to an incoming secretary of state and make a case, you could consider pitching an issue as one of their top priorities. You’ll be doing well if correspondence via this route has a major influence, as by the time you get an introductory meeting (if you do), they will probably have settled on priorities; but if you can get to them quickly by some route, it could be an option.

And finally, the other public affairs dimension of all this will be to wrap up relations with outgoing ministers. There may not be much mileage in this, and quite often organisations don’t bother trying to contact ministers who have just departed. But if they have shown a particular keenness on an issue, perhaps consider nudging your public affairs colleagues to continue the relationship, especially if the former minister is returning to the backbenches. They could be useful in an all party group, or pop up again on a select committee. Equally, if you deal with any select committees, has their composition changed as a result of members moving into government, and might this have a bearing on their work and how it relates to your issues? Small changes in composition don’t usually affect the positions adopted by select committees, but they may do if it involves a change of chair.

If you’re contemplating your next steps as the government changes, what are you planning to do? Are there implications that I’ve missed in the above? Or is it actually not hugely relevant to your policy work? Share your experience in the LinkedIn group, pop it in the comments, or just hit reply.