We have created the worst possible system of government
Keir Starmer does not appear to have many original thoughts (aides say he doesn’t read books while the PM himself told a baffled journalist that he doesn’t have dreams) so it’s no surprise that one of the few interesting things he’s ever said was in fact first uttered by one of his predecessors.
Boris Johnson once said that he’d go to pull a lever in Downing Street only to find it was made of jelly, and this observation was echoed by Starmer late last year. He spoke of pulling a lever only to find that nothing happened.
This must have been particularly disappointing given that he’d previously said “the first lever we will pull is the growth lever.” It cannot be ruled out that Starmer, in opposition, expected to find an actual lever in the Treasury – underneath a sign saying “pull for growth” – just waiting for a leader with the presence of mind to actually reach out and yank it.
Upon realising no such lever existed he commanded one be built, only to find that at that point nothing happened. He then gave a speech criticising the quality of the civil service before promptly apologising if anyone thought for a moment that he was criticising the quality of the civil service. In truth, civil servants are not to blame for the ineptitude of the British state. At least, they’re not wholly to blame.
Decadent bureaucratic inertia
They’re just one part of a system that has grown over three decades; a system of stakeholder supremacy, judicial review, quangos, dispersed accountability, box-ticking, buck-passing, regulatory overreach, rule by lawyers, rule by consultation, rule by judges and the elevation of process over results.
There are many reasons of policy, law, self-interest and even economics why this mass of decadent bureaucratic inertia has been allowed to thrive, and it will take a genuine revolution to dismantle it. Nigel Farage says he’s up for the job, but will rewiring Whitehall really be top of his to-do list?
As for Starmer, we just have to recognise (as he must surely have by now) that the only thing worse than having a plan undermined by the inadequacies of the state is to have no plan at all, in which case the state’s inadequacies simply roll on, unchecked, untamed and unashamed.