Back in December, the head of construction company told me the following:
"No one has got to grips with what's just happened to us. Which means the don't really understand what it takes to get us out of this. And that leaves us drifting."
His comment got to the heart of the matter - do we really know where we are , why we've gotten here and where we want to go as an economy?
A couple of recent reports on the state of government in the UK suggests why we haven't come to grips with our problems:
"a conspicuous lack of a single coherent strategy for government as a whole...inhibits the ability to set overall government priorities and translate them into action."
Another report by Whitehall Manderins comes to similar conclusions and makes the following recommendations:
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improve the quality of legislation by slowing down the legislative process and improving scrutiny;
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strengthening Commons Selet Committees; and
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stopping the frequent shifting of Ministers.
Although these criticisms are slightly sensational as they come just months before an election, they are all too familiar to businesses at the sharp end of frequent changes to the tax and skills systems, for example.
EEF raised these issues last year - first in our report on the competitiveness of the tax system, and then again in Manufacturing. Our Future. report which set out a government-wide strategy to rebuild our economy.
So what's the key challenge for the next parliament given these criticisms about the state of government?
Thinking and acting differently, because we can't afford to drift any longer.