By government we mean ministers and civil servants acting together. Often in the meeting of ministers and civil servants, if you do not know the participants beforehand, it is difficult to work out from what people say, who are ministers and who are civil servants. Ministers will make suggestions about policy and implementation and civil servants about presentation.

Ministers rarely think beyond the next election. Civil servants are supposed to provide the continuity - to provide the 'institutional memory', and to be professionals. Traditionally, however, the top civil servants have regarded themselves as experts in 'administration'. It doesn't matter, the theory goes, whether they are dealing with pensions, health or defence; administrators ought to be able to master the subject instantly without special training and to develop policy. This is very gradually changing, but outsiders brought into the civil service comment that there isn't very much 'evidence based' policy making.

An equal problem is that the top civil servants do not serve the public directly nor do they (generally) answer to parliament: they are the servants of ministers. Ministers' short term political concerns therefore become civil servants' priorities.

Although civil servants have to bow to ministers' preoccupations over high profile matters, they can often determine what happens over equally important but less high profile matters, where politicians have no fixed view. This is the kind of situation portrayed in 'yes minister'. Civil servants manipulate ministers for their own convenience. In short whose view prevails rarely depends on rational analysis of the wider public interest.

Recently things have got much worse. New Labour have chosen to govern through an increased number of special advisers, some of whom give orders to civil servants. In spite of the rhetoric about 'delivery', the government's record on implementation of policy has been very poor. Too much emphasis is placed on presentation.