New Labour Groupthink

I was reading article on PsyBlog about fighting groupthink with dissent. Essentially for a group to be effective there must be a critical voice within, otherwise it becomes self for filling and enforcing.

I've commented on Brown being in this position several times on this blog. If you don't have people around you to challenge your views and ideas, you create artificial world around yourself. That's not productive as no one is right 100% of the time. It's also good to have to defend and refine your views, as you can discover weakness in them and sometimes realise you are missing a point or the point.

There is a wonderful article by Jenni Russell about Labour's views on public services. She writes on the NHS:

people don't emerge from the system thinking how brilliant and well resourced it is. They come out grateful for having survived it, and conscious of how anxious and threatened they felt within it. They care less about gleaming new buildings than about the human relationships that take place within them – and those have been made less warm, less good and less likely to flourish precisely because of the reforms that Labour has pursued.

Their steadfast views on public services are a good example of groupthink. They sat in a room looking at figures, everyone congratulating themselves on what a good job they've done. Using statistics to prove there points and enforce them. No one challenging the idea of box ticking, bureaucracy and the effect that's had on people and services. So they've kept on doing it.

What disappoints me and really angers me about this is, what a waste, a completely wasted 12 years. They could have done anything yet look where we are, it's even worst than it was in 1997. Now what was their pledge again?