ABSTRACT
On the other hand, it is undeniable that certain elements of the Conservative legacy as regards the state are extremely and explicitly valuable to the Blair administration. For one thing, constraints on trade union power mean that the public is much less likely to expect that the advent of a Labour Government threatens a repetition of the ‘Winter of Discontent’. Other developments, though less immediately apparent, are just as important. For instance, there is the stress on evaluation and assessment which now pervades the public sector culture: things are no longer done just because that’s the way they’ve always been done, and people – and the units they work in – are judged in terms of results delivered against sets of criteria based on objectives. The new Government can use these and other techniques to get more out of a civil service (though one rather demoralised by the Conservatives) than they’ve ever been able to before – particularly if they capitalise on their evident desire to ensure political managerial control of the centre of the machine, for example, via a newly empowered Cabinet Office.
