Art? It’s all about goals and delivery

SIR Michael Barber, the political delivery guru, says even great works of art can fit the target delivery framework he uses in government. Barber, who worked under Tony Blair and has been hired by Boris Johnson, told a How To Academy event last night that Picasso’s Guernica was the perfect example. Commissioned by the Spanish government to make a painting for an exhibition in Paris, Picasso had a “measurable goal” and a deadline, and thanks to his mistress and a Czech painter employed to check up on him every day, his own “delivery unit”. The result was a masterpiece. Take that, Muses.