Robert Conquest's ‘Third Law of Politics' famously states that the simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that a secret cabal of its enemies controls it.
The long and tortuous journey, which ended last month with housing minister Matthew Pennycook advising the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to reverse course and order all cancelled county and district local elections to take place this May, offers complete validation of British historian Conquest's third law – the explanation for why organisations (like government agencies) seem to work against their own best interests.
