Partnership is hard to do

摘要

When the history of how the public sector worked in the 1990s comes to be written, I predict that one of the things which the political historian will highlight will be the inexorable rise of partnership as a required form of working -and also its presence as a political mantra in almost every field of activity. If things move as I suspect they will, the historian will also comment on our extraordinary naivety about the realities of partnership working, including how to make it effective. This will be because from his or her future perspective, there will be widespread understanding of how to make partnerships effective and years of established good practice underpinning that understanding.