A senior Tory minister, whose party under its former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, introduced the most aggressive and destructive form of neo-liberalism in Britain, with its privatisation, deregulation, and marketisation agenda, has finally succumbed to the truth and has wisened up.
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has said that the failure of G4S in the run-up to the Olympics has challenged his thinking on the private sector.
Former businessman Mr Hammond told the Independent he went into government with a "starting prejudice" that it should learn from the private sector.In the Independent newspaper interview, Mr Hammond said the issues with the security contractor had been "quite informative" for ministers.
"The G4S model says here is a cost envelope within which I have to deliver an outcome and therefore I have to do it incredibly leanly.
"I'm learning that the application of the lean commercial model does have relevance in areas of the MoD but, equally, you can't look at a warship and say, 'How can I bring a lean management model to this?' – because it's doing different things with different levels of resilience that are not generally required in the private sector."
"I have to do it with very little resilience. So G4S were literally hiring people and expecting to deploy them three days later, into a live situation; trying to build up a management structure overnight, at the beginning of the operation.
"A very lean structure, with lots of dependence on self-motivation by the people in the workforce; scheduling their own shifts, for example, by accessing an internet site.
"The military comes at it from the exact opposite extreme. What's the job that needs to be done? Ok, we'll do it. Whatever it takes we'll pour in massive over-resourcing, massively heavy structures of management."
He added: "What the military primarily deliver is contingent capability and I haven't been able to think of a single large-scale example where a private organisation delivers a contingent capability.
Read the whole interview: