The secret to good government? Actually trying

The power of a new government stems not from its ideas but its enthusiasm. Labour, which on July 5th, kicked off with a approved with the simple squiggle of a minister’s pen. Three giant solar farms were nodded through. A ban on onshore wind farms was removed by ministerial diktat. Or as Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, put it in peculiarly teenage syntax: “It was just, like, ‘delete’.”A new government is a reminder of an old lesson: effort is the most underrated force in British politics. What governments should do is endlessly debated; how they should do it is almost completely ignored. In his book “How To Run A Government”, Sir Michael Barber, a former New Labour adviser and perhaps the most effective aide of the past half-century, sets out a rule of thumb: “Policy is 10% and implementation 90%.” In politics, in other words, trying is nearly everything.