From City Council to Reform Leader: Vijay Luthra on UK Politics, NHS Change & Public Service
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Episode Summary
UK public service reformist Vijay Luthra shares his unique journey from roadie to city councillor to management consultant, offering insights into the challenges facing modern politics on both sides of the Atlantic. This conversation explores the erosion of public service ethos, the differences between "Big P" and "small p" politics, and practical approaches to NHS reform. Luthra discusses how his consulting firm helps public service organizations become more agile and resilient, the role of entrepreneurial thinking in government, and the cultural differences between UK and US trade unions. The discussion also touches on Brexit's lasting impact, the importance of local government engagement, and lessons both nations can learn from each other's political divisions.
Key Topics: UK politics, NHS reform, public service, government consulting, entrepreneurship in government, Brexit, trade unions, local government, civic engagement, political culture
Table of Contents
- Introduction and Guest Welcome
- Vijay's Journey into Public Service
- Big P vs. Small P Politics
- Challenges in Modern Politics
- Public Service Reform and Consulting
- Entrepreneurial Mindset in Government
- Current Projects and NHS Reforms
- Trade Unions and Government Relations
- Reflections on UK and US Politics
- Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Introduction and Guest Welcome
Evan Meyer: Hey everybody. Welcome to my side chats. Today we have Vijay Luthra. How are you?
Vijay Luthra: I'm great. Thanks Evan and, uh, really great to join you.
Evan Meyer: It's great to have you. So Vijay you are an ex government inside government guy and, working for the government in politics. You also have served some time in public service as an elected representative. You have a consulting company where you are a public service reformist, which is one of my favorite three words to put together. I think it's fantastic. So great journey.
Vijay's Journey into Public Service
Evan Meyer: Tell me a little bit about your journey and where you're at now.
Vijay Luthra: Very, very happy to Evan and, and so, so I guess I've come to, to public service from some slightly, a slightly odd direction. I started my, my working life as a, uh, as a roadie. Funnily, funnily enough. But the life of a, a roadie wasn't, wasn't really for me. And I ended up taking a job, working for the Mayor of London and that was the role that really got me into public service. But I guess if I, if I, if I rewind, I, I've all grown up with a bit of a, a public service ethos and my, both of my parents have, spent periods of their life working in, in government in various guises. My mom was a teacher for a very long time. My dad was a civil servant before, before he passed away. So that the public service ethos has been there from, from a, from a young, from a young age.
Vijay Luthra: I was also politically active from a young age, so my parents were activists for a political party in the UK called the SDP, the Social Democratic Party, which no longer exists in UK political history. They split from the Labor Party at the point in time when the Labor party was very left wing. And so my parents were activists and, you know, I would go on the campaign trail with them, you know, being pushed around in a push chair.
Evan Meyer: Wow. It's built into your, it's built into your blood.
Vijay Luthra: Kind of built into my, into my blood. Yeah. But I guess my journey, I spent about a decade as a civil servant in the UK. And then I spent just over another decade in management consulting. But all of that time has pretty much been working in government or public service in one form or another.
Vijay Luthra: And then as you were kind enough to mention, I also spent a term in office as a city counselor in a part of London called Wandsworth, which was really interesting. Great. Four years. One of the things it taught me is that politics is difficult and that there is more to politics than the big P of politics. There's also lots of small p politics.
Evan Meyer: Ah, well said. Uh, I like that. Elaborate on that.
Big P vs. Small P Politics
Evan Meyer: What's the difference between Big P and small P politics?
Vijay Luthra: Yeah, so, so I think and, and I think, you know, being Anglo-Saxon, or having many Anglo-Saxon shared views and values that there are probably many similarities between the US and UK in terms of how politics work at the micro level.
Vijay Luthra: So small p politics is, you know, the kind of politics of organizations, of groups, of people, which is it's about views, values, relationships, grudges, hatred. It's, it's more about human emotion than it necessarily is about the sort of higher ideals of political philosophies. And I guess I was a local counselor and in the UK it's not the same construct as in the US where I know many of your listeners are from.
Vijay Luthra: If you're a local counselor in the UK it's a part-time role. You do get paid some money, but you do it alongside your day job and you represent a much smaller number of people. So I represented along with two others about 11,000 people. So, you know, it's a smaller commitment than you would undertake in the US.
Vijay Luthra: But the time commitment is still very very extensive. And I guess I was there at a time when the Labor Party, so I was a Labor Party counselor had gone from running this part of London with a very small majority to a very large majority. And when you have a very small majority, unity is essential. When you go to a very large majority, unity is still essential to get things done, but it becomes more difficult to create unity because that's when you start to get people maneuvering for self-interest or for their own causes.
Vijay Luthra: And in fact, I think it's interesting we're starting to see a bit of that in UK government. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer has just headed off a big parliamentary rebellion over welfare payments. And that's the sort of first signs that the unity in the labor government is starting to crack.
Evan Meyer: Hmm, interesting. So to some degree, the more unity in thought, the more opportunity there is to divert from the policies that would unite you and move more into self-interest. Did I sort of understand that right? Where unity has this conflict of interest.
Challenges in Modern Politics
Vijay Luthra: Yeah, I think it can do. I mean, I'm slightly pessimistic about the future of politics on both sides of the pond these days.
Vijay Luthra: One of the reasons why I'm a bit more pessimistic is 'cause I think, back to that public service ethos point we were discussing at the start, I fear a lot of that public service ethos has dissipated away.
Evan Meyer: Hmm.
Vijay Luthra: I think self-interest has become a much greater driver in politics on both sides of the pond. I still see a great many people who run for elected office because they want to do the right thing, but I see many, many more politicians who in my view have gone into it because they're ambitious for themselves. And I think—
Evan Meyer: Does that mean money? Does that mean money and power for themselves? Is that the general couplet of self-interested things?
Vijay Luthra: Well I think, I think, well one of the big differences between the UK and the US is that there isn't quite so much money sloshing around in UK politics. So I would say it's about power.
Evan Meyer: Hmm.
Vijay Luthra: And I think reflecting on 20 years ago, you may have had maybe 10% members of Parliament who thought that they were good enough to be Prime Minister. I think nowadays it's the reverse. I think 90% of members of Parliament perhaps think that they're good enough to be Prime Minister, and I think that has had a deep impact on the culture and relationships that we have in our politics.
Vijay Luthra: And I think when people are more self interested, I think people detect that. And, you know, we're having some very similar challenges of credibility in our elected leaders in perhaps a similar way to the challenges that you're having in the states.
Public Service Reform and Consulting
Evan Meyer: Sure. Well, you're as a public service reformist. You have a company that does some in part some health projects and other public service, local government related projects. Tell me a little bit about some of those and some of the outcomes you're looking to achieve and maybe how that's related to solving some of the stuff that we've just talked about.
Vijay Luthra: Yeah. So I set the company up—
Vijay Luthra: As I mentioned, spent, you know, the last sort of 10, 12 years as a management consultant working mostly in big companies. My view is that many of those big companies are no longer operating in the best interests of wider society and nor are they operating in the interests of their clients to be frank. So when I set up my company Siva that desire to do the right thing is, you know, we've centered that at the heart of the company. My business partner and I, and another reason for setting it up is I think we are globally in the most challenging time we faced probably since the start of the Cold War.
Vijay Luthra: You know, if you reflect on the landscape that we are living through at the moment, you know, we have a war on the European mainland for the first time since the end of the second World War. We have emerging technologies which are putting lots of different aspects of how we live our lives under pressure. Again, in the US and the UK and in other places, Canada for example, we have a challenge of aging population and that's putting huge pressures, not just on our health systems, but across the government and public services landscape. I think the challenge for public services organizations is that they've gotta do more for less. They've gotta be agile, they've gotta be resilient. And so my desire is to help public service organizations build that resilience, that agility, to be able to continue and to thrive as we continue moving into this uncharted territory.
Evan Meyer: Yeah. That's interesting. You know, and it's funny as an entrepreneur myself, you know, being agile and resilient and fast to adapt and learn, right? Things that are traditionally associated with entrepreneurship or business mindset. I've had a couple conversations about this. One with mayor Matt Mahan of San Jose here, who built a civic tech company and sold it. And so he had, and I asked him a lot about this entrepreneurial mindset in government. He's now the mayor.
Entrepreneurial Mindset in Government
Evan Meyer: And I guess my question for you is how do you think people need to be thinking in government that's—we'll say that's possible because there's some level of bureaucracy that needs to stay as it is for certain important reasons, right? Like you have to be able to have some level of protection, of consistent service, right? That is just like the system needs to just work. Doesn't always need to be efficient, as long as it works 99% of the time or whatever, sometimes, right? They're unwilling to take those risks to for reduction of service or stuff like that, right? And as a person who's always just like, come on, you know, sometimes, you know, move fast, break things, learn fast, grow, fix it, be agile. Where, what do you think is possible in government with that kind of mentality and where does it sort of end?
Vijay Luthra: I mean, I think there's a happy meeting place in the middle between the extremes of entrepreneurial practice and the extremes of civil service practice. And I've been in both worlds. And, you know, one of the reasons I left government, working in government in the UK was because I didn't feel as if I could influence the change I wanted to see from the inside. So I went into consulting in order to be able to drive some of the change I wanted to see.
Vijay Luthra: But equally, I think, you know, the worst excesses of the entrepreneurial mindset are not right for governments. A lot of entrepreneurs, for example, have the privilege of being able to focus on a very specific or narrow problem. There's an entrepreneur here in the UK, guy called Tom Blomfield. He's one of the co-founders of a bank called Monzo. So he is very wealthy. He, I think it was last year, tweeted something about how he could come in and radically reform government and a number of other people were quite quick to criticize that mindset because it's easier said than done. I think one of the privileges of being an entrepreneur is that you can choose the problem you are gonna point at. Government doesn't always get to choose the problem it points at.
Vijay Luthra: It doesn't get to choose who it can provide services to. So government is often dealing with complex—you know what in the entrepreneurial world we might call edge cases. Government doesn't have the ability to say, no, we can't serve those people. They always have to be served. So as I say, I think there's a happy medium. Where do I think government could be less risk averse. And it's not completely risk averse. It's about adjusting a little to be slightly less risk averse. I also think government should be open to newer ideas, and certainly in the UK, if you wanna work with central government and you are a small business, it's incredibly difficult to do that. And that's a lot about risk management. And I think it's probably the same in the US. If you want to work with the federal government it's probably very difficult to actually get through the door, even if you're knocking on the door.
Evan Meyer: Very much. Yeah, I think, well there's a cultural attitude, I think, at all layers of government in a little bit of a different capacity. But the big, the bigger it gets, the harder it is to change and things are done some way for some reason. You know, often at the city level, for example, someone sued someone for tripping on the sidewalk. Okay? So now you can't put rocks around your trees on the sidewalk because someone slipped on a rock and they sued the city and they settled. And like so much is built around like cases like that. Especially on the local ordinance level, right?
Local Government and Community Engagement
Evan Meyer: And which is why it's so important for people to get involved at the local level where it matters. You actually can get involved. The things you'll see and feel like day to day at the local level, you can actually have your voice heard meaningfully.
Vijay Luthra: Yes.
Evan Meyer: And it's harder to have your voice heard federally about the war in, you know, wherever, right? Like your, the average person's viewpoint on Vladimir Putin is not gonna ring too many ears and be like, oh, what a great idea. Right? Like, that's such a smart point. We should change our entire international strategy. Right? But at the local level, the average person can create that change. I'm assuming it's similar in the UK.
Vijay Luthra: Yeah, I mean, I'd definitely say—I mean, again, reflecting on my experience as a city councilor in the UK, one of my compatriots once said to me that as a local counselor, you have virtually no power, but lots of accountability. And that's broadly true because you are accountable to the people you represent, and it's a very direct kind of democracy. Because, you know, you'd receive feedback during council meetings, formal and also informal, but then also you'd go and be in the community. So whether that was, you know, in the UK, we'd do it slightly different to the US. But you know, we knock on doors, we canvas, we campaign, we seek out people who have casework issues they'd like to be resolved. And then we also go to community meetings.
Vijay Luthra: So it's often a very direct form of democracy, which, if you are—if you are sat in 10 Downing Street, you'll get some of that because you still need to see constituents. But I'd be surprised if the Prime Minister was experiencing the same kind of direct democracy that, you know, any back bench counselor in the UK would. And equally by the same token, I imagine the president could look out of the window of the Oval Office and probably distantly see some of the protesters out on Pennsylvania Avenue. But how much contact does he have with those protesters or those people seeking to make submissions? I would guess it's probably very little.
Current Projects and NHS Reforms
Evan Meyer: Um, are there any projects specifically that you're working on right now that you're excited about or that you want to talk about that you think are important?
Vijay Luthra: Yeah, I mean we're going through a really big system or systems wide series of changes in the UK at the moment. It's, you know, probably the biggest checkup of public services for a generation. I like to think the intent is to put those services on a more sound footing. I think many have become very, very fragile. So we're doing quite a lot of work in the NHS at the moment. The work we are doing is typically when NHS trusts—so that the sort of the organizational constructs that a hospital or group of hospitals align to, is called a trust.
Vijay Luthra: And typically when this happens periodically in the NHS, when there's a need to make cost reductions, efficiencies, most hospitals will start a program of what's called CIPs—cost improvement programs. And so that's happening across the NHS in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland at the moment. And it's often a very difficult challenging process because it means taking a view on what things are we not gonna do anymore. In some cases it means reducing staff numbers. I mean, in fact the NHS is running a program of redundancy for the first time in a very long time.
Evan Meyer: Hmm.
Vijay Luthra: What we are doing is, so one of the trusts we're working with we're actually helping them look into the future and to reinterpret their operating model and to understand, you know, what does that operating model need to look like for the future?
Vijay Luthra: So the work we're doing with them will save them money. But it's also about optimizing them to be able to deliver services, patient impacts well into the future. So it's a bit more, from my perspective of a positive and more strategic problem that we're helping them solve, rather than just going in there and salami slicing stuff to help them save money.
Evan Meyer: Sure. How do you hold—I don't want to know if it's hold them accountable, but how did they hold themselves accountable for, you know, hitting some of those, I'll use the term like KPIs, right? But obviously you're going and trying to make a change. Like okay, you can have more people can be served with less resources to some degree or less money, right? We could be more effective in this approach by changing a few things.
Vijay Luthra: Yeah.
Evan Meyer: Like what could be one of those things? For example, and how do they make sure that they can stay consistent with those, you know, trying to achieve? And do you set those benchmarks like, we're gonna get from 95 to 99% or stuff like that?
Vijay Luthra: So it's cash and what the NHS calls non-cash releasing. So some of the works that we're doing will for example readjust this trust's organizational design. So org design is an aspect of operating model. It's, but it's the last bit you do because you need to understand how your organization to fit its different component parts together before you then start to work out, well, which boxes do we put people in? So there's a process of redundancy that will go alongside that. That's not our responsibility. It's the trust will do it themselves. But the problem we're helping solve is what capabilities, what people do you need in your organization of the future. And then you don't need everybody.
Vijay Luthra: So as I say, it's not quite so positive. It's, you know, they'll lose a few heads. But we're also looking at productivity measures. So, for example, the NHS will typically look at things like the number of bed days or what we call length of stay. So the amount of time that somebody's been in hospital for and what are the ways in which we can help influence those metrics is to do more in the home. And so there's a concept here called virtual wards. I think what in the US is called hospital at home. And so there's some very promising tech enabled people driven solutions around virtual wards where, for example, someone is discharged from a hospital bed a bit earlier to their home, in order to, they'll recover better because they're at home, but they're not entirely on their own because there'll be a bit of tech to monitor like vitals.
Evan Meyer: Mm-hmm.
Vijay Luthra: And there'll also be a team of people who will go in to check on that person.
Vijay Luthra: Once those people are out of hospital, they're not as expensive, but they've also released that capacity within the system to do more. And hospitals can bank that in one of two ways. They can either take the cash saving and, you know, if you get enough volume, you can for example, you might wanna close down a hospital ward, but actually what we generally tend to recommend is take that capacity and do more with it.
Evan Meyer: Yeah.
Trade Unions and Government Relations
Evan Meyer: Well, I don't know if you have the equivalent of unions in the UK—
Vijay Luthra: We do have unions.
Evan Meyer: You have—are they called unions?
Vijay Luthra: They're called unions. Yeah.
Evan Meyer: Oh, okay, good. Um, so, and I mean, do they, and do the government workers belong to some of those unions where their jobs are protected? So do you deal with the same sort of protection level of workers and you can't, you have, you need real sufficient reason to take them off staff. Right. Very often. So you probably reorganizing is easier than cutting people. Right. And probably a lot feels better for the government, I'm guessing. I probably like that. Yeah.
Vijay Luthra: Yeah, I mean, our job is to advise. So we're not dealing directly with the unions, but, you know, I've been a trade union member. I think, you know, trade unions do good work. They're important. I think it's critical to have representation in the workplace. You know, my, the way I advise clients is always to work hand in hand with the unions.
Vijay Luthra: I think most of them recognize that we're in exigent circumstances that something needs to change. And, you know, they are persuadable. But yeah, I mean, it is more challenging operating in that space. I think, you know, the nature of trade unions between the US and UK is slightly different. I think the British flavor of trade unionism is perhaps a little bit more agreeable in the sense that those unions are generally staffed by people who are used to sitting down with leadership in the organizations to—
Evan Meyer: Ah, I see.
Vijay Luthra: To negotiate over pay settlements and terms and conditions and all of those things. So at working level, the relationships are often, you know, sort of reasonably good. Not necessarily warm, but you know, they're effective working relationships.
Evan Meyer: You don't have the same stories that you have in America with unions.
Vijay Luthra: Rarely. I think, you know, it might get to that extreme, but very rarely in my experience.
Evan Meyer: Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. That's sort of an interesting nuance to UK politics.
Vijay Luthra: Yeah.
Evan Meyer: Where there's agreeableness, where you, where, where, what can be learned from that? Like why does that really, those relationships work better in the UK? Or at least tend to be not as divisive. Maybe they're just not as newsworthy. I don't know. But or it's just people don't care about getting the headlines as much.
Vijay Luthra: So I think I might be inclined to say it's probably more to do with the differences in culture between the US and the UK where, you know, Brits, we are famous for not being terribly confrontational. Right. So I think that's part of it.
Evan Meyer: Hmm.
Vijay Luthra: And I think, but I think also, the nature of trade union membership has changed quite dramatically over the last 50 years. It's declined quite rapidly, so unions represent fewer people than they would've done, you know, even 20 years ago.
Vijay Luthra: Um, so their influence has declined a little bit, but there's still powerful forces in politics. You know, most trade unions in the UK can affiliate to a political party and a great many affiliate to the Labor Party, and they are therefore the source of quite significant sums of money for the Labor Party. So that makes them tremendously influential. But as I say, I think culturally there perhaps isn't the same sort of track record of robust, perhaps aggressive where things don't go the union's way, walkout strikes and things like that. I mean, some of that is illegal in the UK. You can go on strike of course, you know, the right to withdraw your labor is a human right. But there are processes that are wrapped around it to make sure it's done in a legal way.
Vijay Luthra: So I don't discount the effects of unions, but I think it's kind of a different a different kind of settlement. And as I say, we as Brits, I think culturally we tend to lean more towards being agreeable types—
Evan Meyer: Hmm, you weren't 200 years ago.
Vijay Luthra: We weren't 200 years ago. Well, I mean, I do wonder to myself, if you think about the young men, they would've all been young men because there were no women in the military at that time who were marched on the White House and set fire to it. I imagine most of the enlisted, all of the enlisted men would've been working class or agricultural class at the time. And then they would've been led by members of the middle class and the aristocracy. And we still have a problem with the class system in the United Kingdom, in my opinion. But back then the class system was even more of an influence. So the aristocracy led the armies, the middle class managed the armies, and it was the agricultural and working class boys who did all the fighting and dying.
Evan Meyer: Is that much different?
Vijay Luthra: Is it much different now? Well, I mean, our armed forces are a great deal smaller than they used to be.
Evan Meyer: Sure.
Vijay Luthra: I mean, my reflection would be is that from an enlisted perspective? I think it's probably still a similar split.
Evan Meyer: Yeah. That's different conversation probably.
Vijay Luthra: I mean, the military's become much, much more professionalized since those days on both sides of the Atlantic. You know, you can no longer, for example, buy a commission as an officer in the military. You have to go. You know, our equivalent of West Point in the UK is Sandhurst which was actually only about, you know, sort of five, six miles up the road from where I live. So, you know, it's a professional military. It's a very skilled military. And, but yes, those sort of divisions are probably still in place.
Reflections on UK and US Politics
Evan Meyer: Yeah. What what would you like to impart to if you could and have a magic wish for London right now? Or the UK in general? What, what would that be? And, and I'll take it. Yeah. And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna add a part B to it, which is, what are those lessons and some of those lessons that you would like to give to the US or even the state of California?
Vijay Luthra: Yeah. I think that the sort of the greatest piece of harm the UK has done itself in living memory.
Vijay Luthra: Was to leave the European Union. It has caused us untold harm. A lot of the issues that we are dealing with at the moment are as a consequence of Brexit. You know, we've had many, many years of anemic growth or no growth at all. Partly due to not being in the European Union, which, you know, let's face it, it's one of the world's biggest single markets. Why wouldn't you want to be in it? You can sell stuff to without any barriers to doing so. So for us to have left that voluntarily was an extremely bad decision.
Vijay Luthra: And you know, the polling in the UK reflects that. I think most people recognize it was an extremely bad decision. We lumped COVID on top of that. So you know, our economy is still not performing at the level that I think it would've performed, that if we'd still been in the European Union, we could have taken the hit from Brexit and from the COVID pandemic. And, you know, I think things would've been bad, but they wouldn't have been this bad. I suspect we are navigating our way back to Europe. But it won't be on the same terms that we had before. The UK had very favorable terms when in the European Union, we had a rebate on our on the membership fee we won't get again if we, if we rejoin. So that would probably, that would be my, my biggest wish is that we, we hadn't left the European Union.
Evan Meyer: So to come back together is your wish to join. Rejoin or just that you hadn't left.
Vijay Luthra: Just that we hadn't left, we will rejoin, but I, I, I think it would be a difficult experience and process. And as I say, we wouldn't get the deal that we had before.
Evan Meyer: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Any lessons that you'd want to, seeing what you see from the UK side of things about the US and what we're going through? All the things. Name your news, headline what would you want to impart to the US? And then if you could narrow it down to California you can, if not, don't worry about it. It may be too nuanced, but up to you.
Vijay Luthra: So, so, so let me start around the theme of unity. So, so the Brexit, the referendum that we had, which is a rare example of direct democracy in the UK. We are not used to running referendums. That, you know, sort of the famous statistic is that it was 52% in favor of leaving the European Union, 48% against leaving the European Union. But it's become a symbol of division across the UK. It's become a symbol of to some extent, class division, it's become a symbol of division between Southern England and northern England. It's become a symbol of division between England and Scotland. It's become a symbol of division between the mainland Great Britain and Northern Ireland, it's become a symbol of division between Great Britain and other parts of the United Kingdom. So my reflection is, is that it, it also feels to me like the US is very divided right now in, you know, in the same way that our civil life is divided in the UK and I think that's a bad thing. You know, I have grown up in an era where the US, whoever was running it, whether you know Republican or Democrat, was always a pretty stable influence and power on the world stage. It doesn't feel like that at the moment. And I think the reason the US has got into the current situation is because of that division that you have. So, you know, my wish for the US would be for more unity to come. And if I steer it back to California, I have very high hopes that Governor Newsom, if he runs for the Democratic nomination, might be the man to bring that unity. But um, but I think we will have to see.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Evan Meyer: All right. All right. Hey, um, I really enjoyed our, our time today. Thanks for sharing your perspective. This is great. I, I'm, I'm inspired by the good work you're doing and the service, uh, that you're looking to provide and, and support and, and, and having all that experience to help guide all the right things forward. So thank you so much. Stick around just for a minute as we close up the session here. But thank you. It was really, really great chatting with you.
Vijay Luthra: Thanks so much, Evan. Take care.
Evan Meyer: All right. All right.
Written by
Evan Meyer
January 12, 2025