Actually governing

This seems to be beyond the Lib Dems. It reportedly slipped Clegg's mind that he would be in charge while Cameron was abroad, so he went skiing. Cable is too puffed up with self-regard to knuckle down and do his job seriously, while Laws, perhaps the most talented of them, fiddled his expenses.

So we can write off the Lib Dems.

But traditionally Conservatives assume themselves born to rule.

After no one seemed to notice for several days that there were Britons in Libya needing help - help which other countries seemed able to provide for their nationals - Cameron rang Hague and Fox. Hague is reportedly to set about carpeting officials, as if no blame could attach to him for having failed to notice such lackadaisical incompetence.

Or maybe Hague was busy picking fonts:

At the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, civil servants must write to ministers using the “Ariel” font, except when writing to William Hague, the Foreign Secretary himself, for whom documents must be in “Georgia”.

Anyway, right on cue James Forsyth is obligingly spinning the line that much of the civil service just isn't up to snuff.

As a senior figure puts it: ‘Ministers are pulling levers and nothing is happening.’

Oh this again. This is almost word for word one of Blair's excuses. If the opposition front bench had been paying even slight attention, they would have heard this and prepared for it. Indeed Francis Maude was reconstructing the governance of departments to ensure that things got done. That's worked well, hasn't it.

Ministers seem to assume they can pronounce and then turn their backs. No. Every policy decision and exploration needs to be managed as a project, with ministerial oversight.

This needn't mean complex project management software. It need only mean a persistent junior minister, empowered by the Secretary of State, with A4 pads.

Junior ministers are among a Secretary of State's most precious resources. Chris Mullin's diaries show how the civil service will take them over and run their lives if they are allowed to. A Secretary of State needs to decide what their junior ministers are for, and then empower them.

The civil service still recruit high quality people, so they have the pool of talent. Ministers need to make them do their jobs.

Douglas Carswell writes that the mandarinate are the Coalition's biggest problem. Well no, their biggest problem is that they disregard the views of the electorate and don't do their jobs very well. Carswell's proposal to haul mandarins before select committees has superficial attraction, but so toothless and manipulable are select committees that they would continue to be fleabites.

However, one announcement today does shine a light on what seems to be civil service complacency. Philip Hammond is expressing concern that that anti-car campaigners have for too long used 'road safety' as a convenient excuse to stop motorway speed limits being raised and to push for more 20mph zones in urban areas even when they are inappropriate.

In future, Mr Hammond will demand that safety alone cannot be the sole determining factor when changing limits and that a thorough cost-benefit analysis which takes into account the economic impact must also be carried out when deciding such matters.

It seems that the bureaucracy had been conspiring with politicians to take the easy route of responding to politically correct pressures, rather than attempting decision making using a rational framework. Questioning this requires a minister who wants to - well - ask questions. (Maybe he'd also like to ask questions about traffic lights.)

Let's hope Philip Hammond follows this through. Otherwise it's just another headline.