Learning from the Pope

The resignation of the Pope reflects one of the more welcome trends of the last century; the tendency towards competence in public office. For the first time ever, the Pope didn't resign because he was forced out by a cabal of cardinals; he resigned because he felt he was no longer up to the job.

This is a surprisingly recent idea. While the applicant's ability to do a job has always been considered relevant to an appointment, it has generally been a relatively minor consideration; to be prioritised below social class or divine influence.

Indeed, our largely accidental empire emerged as a result of the extreme incompetence of much of our then-new civil service. A British tradition of muddling through (in which we took considerable pride) allowed commercial entities to build vast imperial interests, before collapsing and being taken over by the state.

The assumption of a ruling class destined to lead a worker class regardless of ability continued to permeate British corporate life right through to the sixties and seventies.

Today, we assume that anyone competent to do a job should obviously be permitted to do it. That's why arguments about female bishops make the Church of England look so absurd to the majority.

You only have to look at the challenges faced by another country of a similar size to ours to see how far we’ve come. Japan, another similarly industrialised country, is allowing itself to become ever more weighed down by the weight of incompetent leaders kept in post by long service, dynastic loyalty or a fear of change.

While everyone who works in any organisation is certain that their boss is an incompetent joker who can only have got the job through offering sexual favours to his or her equally incompetent manager, it is probably true that, overall, our institutions are currently led by a more competent group of individuals than at any point in the past thousand years (I make no comment on the administrative capabilities of the Romans - looking from the outside, they seem pretty much up to the mark).

There is, however, a glaring exception. One area of British life in which competence is not considered and where the old Imperial traditional of muddling through reigns supreme. This is, of course, Government.

To quote Sir Humphrey:
 
Bernard, there are only six hundred and thirty MPs. If one party has just over three hundred it forms a government. Of that three hundred one hundred are too old and silly, one hundred are too young and too callow, which leaves just about a hundred MP’s to fill one hundred governmental posts. There’s no choice at all, they’ve had no selection, no training.

Not much has changed in the last thirty years. I'm not sure I can think of a single member of the cabinet who has proven competence in policy development, change management or leadership - surely the definition of the job of a cabinet minister.

In the US, the President's cabinet is appointed from the widest possible field of possible competent candidate. That's why Barack Obama, when first elected in 2008, appointed a Republican as Defence Secretary and his arch-rival as Secretary of State.

Now that even Popes have to be able to live up to performance standards, how about we take a lead from the Catholic church and adopt the principle of competence in our political life? It’s only an idea, but surely worth trying? All it would require is for Prime Ministers to be able to appoint the best person for the job to be Government ministers as opposed to MPs, and for a mechanism to be developed for them to be held accountable by Parliament.

Meanwhile, this is presumably only a first step for the Catholic church? Given the acceptance that the Pope should be competent, surely the next step must be for the Pope to be the most competent person possible. Running an organisation with a budget of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of people requires highly specialist skills. Sir Terry Leahy, recently retired from Tesco, might be just the man. A dedicated Everton fan (the footballing branch of the Catholic faith), Sir Terry's loyalty card experience might be just what the ailing European branch of the church is looking for. And it would mean that, for the first time, the correct answer to the question "Is the Pope a Catholic?" would be "Not necessarily, but he’s great at consumer segmentation"...