Why there are so many duds in Cabinet

We all take the syllogism for granted. The railways are in a mess. Tony Blair is away. Therefore Tony Blair must come home. Otherwise nothing will happen. And the same goes for the NHS, teacher shortages in schools and anything else we care to think of.

The Prime Minister is thus not only the universal Mr Fix-it. He is the only Mr Fixit. Remove him from the scene and British government is suddenly paralysed, as though somebody had pulled the plug on its entire life-support machine.

Not only that, but Tony Blair intends to be away a great deal this year. He says so himself. His diary planners are working on that basis. The Prime Minister used to wave at non-existent crowds from the steps of Number 10. Now he waves at equally non-existent crowds from the steps of airplanes.

Our worry, of course, is that while Blair flies, Britain rots. Mr Blair himself adds force to it by saying "I" instead of "we" and by insisting on the paramount importance of Britain's public services while addressing Indian businessmen in Bangalore. All world leaders succumb to the temptation of trying to be world statesmen. Tony Blair has succumbed more comprehensively than most.

Of course the Blair Government is not entirely a one- person government. Robin Cook and Jack Straw occasionally have their say. David Blunkett is lord of the Home Office. Gordon Brown surveys the spending of all departments - - and is undisputed monarch of all he surveys. Prime ministers in the old days used to go to the airport-to wave goodbye to the Queen whenever she left the country. Gordon Brown these days must feel like waving goodbye to Mr Blair.

It was not always thus. A government committee called "the Cabinet" - older readers may remember it - used to meet to take decisions. Moreover, it took decisions not just formally but in reality. Harold Wilson's Cabinet in the 1960s met repeatedly to decide whether to take Britain into Europe. Jim Callaghan's Cabinet took collective decisions about how to deal with the 1976 sterling crisis. Mrs Thatcher was unusual in not taking her Cabinet seriously.

On top of that, British government was meant to be - and usually was - government "in depth". Apart from the duds, ministers in charge o f de partments were expected to know their jobs and to get on with doing them. A prime minister dissatisfied with a particular minister's performance did not try to do his job for him. He sacked him and replaced him with someone else.

The fact that ministers were expected to be up to doing their jobs meant they were granted a good deal of autonomy. They were expected to take initiatives. They had to answer in the House of Commons. They carried the can if things went wrong. Provided they were doing a good job, individual ministers often had little contact with Downing Street. Anthony Crosland, Labour education secretary in the 1960s, used to comment on how much freedom Harold Wilson gave him.

Under Tony Blair those practices have largely gone - apart from David Blunkett, for now, and the Chancellor, always. If British government was once government in depth, it is now government in the shallows.

Part of the reason is that, contrary to the old American saying that "all politics is local", all politics today is international - and, as in wartime, decisions are inevitably forced upwards. The present Prime Minister is also conscious that under the old system warring departments and ministers often failed to address big issues that happened to cut across departmental boundaries.

But Tony Blair has another problem - one that scarcely dares speak its name. Previous governments always had a few duds. But this one has a lot - and the Prime Minister knows it. His administration consists of a few bright stars and a multitude of black holes. Witness transport ministers in recent weeks trying to defend the present rail shambles.

The reason for the Government's chronic shortage of talent is obvious, and has nothing to do with Mr Blair. Labour was out of power for 18 years. During that time, no Labour MPs gained ministerial experience. Few new Labour MPs entered the House. Not least, the belief that Labour was permanently out of power deterred able men and women from standing as Labour candidates. The intake of new Labour MPs in 1997 thus turned out to be as unimpressive as it was enormous.

Hence, in large part, the sucking of power into Number 10. Hence Tony Blair's extensive use of ministers parachuted into the Lords.

Given this endemic shortage of ministerial talent, the Prime Minister has to choose. Either he continues to centralise, or he finds other means of thickening his dangerously thin middlemanagement tier, perhaps by appointing yet more Lords ministers, perhaps (though he would hate this) by giving wider scope to the Civil Service. The risks of continued centralisation are obvious from the Thatcher era; illjudged decisions (think of the 1980s poll tax) and increased personal vulnerability ( remember Mrs Thatcher's final fall).

Whatever Mr Blair decides, the rest of us will scarcely be comforted by the realisation that, if things are bad under Labour after a generation out of power, they are bound to be even worse - and for the same reason - when the Conservatives next come in.

Anthony King is Professor of Government at Essex University.