Daniel Bell was wrong, as it turns out. He said in the post-industrial society (to paraphrase) that the application of theoretical knowledge would be the way public policy was decided, rather than unseemly struggles over power and money.
When James Purnell became Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, we welcomed it as a good example of political power being handed to someone who has a fair amount of expertise in his ministerial brief. Without wanting to exaggerate the revolutionary nature of this appointment, it seemed like we had a minister who knew the theory, and was going to apply it.
We thought, and we really believed, Purnell was going to instigate a wide-ranging debate on the future of broadcasting and, as definitively as possible, produce a policy settlement that would last a generation.
Instead, Purnell is yanked out after less than a year in the job, and told to go and replace police suspect Peter Hain at the Department of Work & Pensions. What a shame. And what an indictment of a Prime Minister that he is using this reshuffle to manage headlines rather than produce the best government.
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