Martin Kettle is right to call for leaders who can operate the machinery of government (Opinion, 7 August). However, it should be made clear that the machinery of government – in which I work as a senior civil servant – is not a “machine”, as many current leaders assume.
In his 2024 book On Leadership, Tony Blair says leaders often make the mistake of believing that the machinery of government is “like an instrument in their hands” that they can learn how to use. It is not an instrument, he points out, but “a living organism [with] a mind and a temperament”.
