By the 1970s, a few generations of the brightest minds in Britain had been utterly flummoxed by our national decline, and felt that managing it was the best they could do in a situation that was inevitable. It took heroic thinkers from outside the Civil Service to diagnose the problems, and come up with the […]
Calls for a ‘bonfire of the quangos’ have been made since David Cameron’s time as Leader of the Opposition all the way through to Keir Starmer’s premiership. Yet for all the rhetoric, the quangocracy has grown bigger, better staffed and more powerful, as is detailed in the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s new quango database. With over 500,000 […]
Keir Starmer is reportedly becoming more and more frustrated at the sluggish reality of government within the current system. Who can blame him? Government is beset by a sclerotic Civil Service and continuous legal battles, while the minds of ministers are full of the same Westminster-bubble preoccupations that have now led to a cratering in […]
When you think of the jobs most likely to be automated away, which do you think of? Those most at threat are those that are repetitive and rule-based, require minimal social or emotional intelligence – and don’t rely heavily on creativity or complex judgement. Customer service work is often being quoted as at threat, as […]
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives. You can read the previous instalments here: Only Thatcher-sized reforms will end Britain’s malaise Britain’s benefits system is unfair for all involved Labour’s change to Ofwat doesn’t hold water . American political strategist […]
Sometimes the body politic needs a shock to the system to return to a healthier rhythm, like a human heart being defibrillated. The Ministry of Defence’s Afghan data loss scandal, and everything that has flowed outwards from it, was a catastrophe and a humiliation in almost every regard – but it is not impossible that […]
A year before the election, if you’d have asked Keir Starmer why government wasn’t working, he would doubtless have replied that it was because the Tories were running it. But a year after the election, he can no longer take solace in such a glib answer; and his actions now suggest he recognises the problem […]
Arms-length bodies, which form a major part of the quango state, directly cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of pounds a year. £353.3 billion in 2022-23, to be precise. And excluded from this are a number of organisations which undoubtedly qualify as quangos under any reasonable definition, such as the Financial Conduct Authority. For the first […]
Last weekend, I was back home in North Essex celebrating my Grandad’s 88th birthday. I reflected on what the Britain of his childhood looked like – a nation of grafters, shaped by hardship, who embodied the ‘Blitz spirit’. I am often reminded of a story told to me of him as a child extinguishing an […]
On June 2, Zia Yusuf, the Chairman of Reform UK, tweeted that a UK version of DOGE – the Department of Government Efficiency – had been launched. Promising an ‘Elon Musk-style’ slashing of government waste, the initiative echoes the American attempt to apply Silicon Valley’s business mindset to the public sector. Now, with Musk stepping […]
The Institute for Government was sceptical, to say the least, in its initial response to Pat McFadden’s bonfire of the quangos. As it stated, ‘the number of bodies is the wrong measure of success’, given that it is ‘an easy metric on which the media can focus’, but which can ‘create an illusion that major […]
The increasingly volatile voter is clear; something is rotten in the state of Britain. According to last year’s British Social Attitudes survey, only 40% of respondents believed the current system delivers effective government. A record 45% said they ‘almost never’ trust any party in power to prioritise the country’s needs over political self-interest, and 79% […]
One of the most obvious causes of our country’s economic distress is rarely commented on. Yet if we just step back from the turmoil of ever-higher taxes, over-breeding regulations and now tariff turmoil, we will discover the blindingly obvious. Unelected, well-funded, self-appointed lobby groups wield enormous political power in our daily lives and exert outsized […]
Quango bonfires are back in fashion – not that they were ever really put out. For years, successive governments have promised to slash the size of our bloated state. Instead, they’ve quietly outsourced power to an alphabet soup of arm’s-length bodies, many of which operate with minimal scrutiny, high costs and an ever-expanding footprint on […]
Michael Gove was, without a doubt, the most able secretary of state produced by the last 14 years of Conservative government. This sounds like praise, and of course it is. But great ability is a two-edged sword. When an able individual sets themselves to good purposes, they can do great things, as Gove did at […]
…the UK also has its own – somewhat quieter – examples of success. High agency individuals who have done a ‘tour of duty’ and changed the wiring of government to respond to major challenges. Neuroscientist and former No 10 adviser James Phillips helped to set up the Advanced Research and Invention Agency; AI engineer and […]
