Publisher's Synopsis
The first ever study of the changing role of fixers as crisis managers in British politics. These range from the 'great and the good' such as Oliver Franks and Arnold Goodman, the unorthodox and self-appointed exemplified by Michael Young, to the recent emergence of corporate fixers in the form of management consultants and professional lobbyists. Smith and Young examine the origins and predispositions of fixers and the modus operandi they adopt in dealing with the critical issues they have to confront, against the background of an unravelling and increasingly archaic constitution whereby crises have changed from being one-off containable events to becoming endemic in the system of contemporary government. Timely reading in the light of the Nolan and Scott enquiries.
