There is a lesson to be learned from the case of Erica Connor which might not be immediately obvious.  Mrs Connor was the former headmistress of New Monument School, a primary school in Woking, Surrey.  She was a victim of a campaign by two Muslim governors to give Islam a greater presence in her school. New Monument School is situated in the Maybury district of Woking and its local education authority is Surrey County Council.

Surrey County Council is controlled by the Conservatives.  Save for a period between 1993 and 1997, it always has been. Its employees hail largely from Conservative supporting Surrey and surrounding areas.  In spite of that fact, a significant proportion of its management level bureaucracy seems to be of a distinctly guardianista mentality.

Mrs Connor was forced to leave her school because of stress after she was unjustly accused of “Islamophobia” and racism by Islamic elements on the school’s board of governors. Surrey County Council failed in its duty to protect her and intervene.  The Council’s excuse for that failure was “fear of a complaint to the Commission for Racial Equality.” In the High Court, the judge, Mr John Leighton-Williams, QC found that council officers had shown “excessive tolerance” towards the two governors [who had caused the school’s governing body to become dysfunctional] and displayed “misplaced sympathy for [one of the governors]”.  In consequence, the Council was ordered to pay Mrs Connor £407,781 in compensation for psychiatric injury, loss of income and pension, medical expenses and the premature end of her career.

After twelve years of Labour misrule, at senior management level most of our institutions are now riddled with individuals of a guardianista persuasion. The Conservatives must adopt a strategy to deal with this. Otherwise, upon returning to the helm of national Government, though perhaps not being baulked outright at every turn by a reluctant bureaucracy, they might find themselves undermined continually or at the very least severely embarrassed.

Asks Matthew Parris, whilst pondering the advantages of judgment-based regulation as against rule-based regulation,

 “...And the question arises: wouldn't it be cheaper, wouldn't it be faster and simpler, and would it really add much to the sum total of general injustice, if we moved in the direction of appointing more commissar-like adjudicators: men and women empowered to consider the spirit and purposes of regulation and then to pronounce definitively, to deem - their judgments final, with no rights of appeal or judicial review?”

To a significant degree, too many decision makers rely upon an unnecessarily restrictive, literal interpretation of rules to enable themselves to avoid making robust decisions. Their fear of being “taken to law” by someone adversely affected is in most cases irrational.  Worse, it is feeble.  Ultimately, it is a question of mindset. Thus, if Mr Parris’ “commissar-like adjudicators” are possessed of the same trepidity the vice he desires expunged will endure.

There is also the issue that in recent years, rules have been amended and clarified in ever greater detail to achieve a political purpose. In such instances, where decision makers have contrived to do the right thing, the rules have been changed again to tighten the straitjacket.  A prime example is the constant amendment of the criminal law where legislators have sought to enable the securing of convictions where evidence is weak or uncorroborated.  Here, more often than not the Courts have still been able to dispense justice against all the odds.

In essence, in so many spheres of life we appear to have appointed the wrong sort of decision maker.