Reforming the Patronage State

Abstract

Patronage lubricates the machinery of British politics; it always has done (Richards, 1963). From ministers to magistrates, peers to judges, honours to quangos, government by appointment rules. It is a myth that elected government has replaced appointed government. It is more accurate to say that elected politicians have inherited the resources of the patronage state. The cruder excesses of Old Patronage may have been reined in (the civil service reforms of the nineteenth century, the sanitary checks on the sale of honours in the twentieth century), but New Patronage is alive and well. If a reminder of this was needed, quangos have supplied it in abundance.