Deblobbing Britain

Bringing responsible government back from the brink

‘The traditional dichotomy between individual and collectivism is, therefore, largely a false antithesis: a strong state has been more the political guarantor of economic individualism than its subverter. The antithesis could more accurately be reframed as one between economic individualism and the corporatism of intermediate agencies, from medieval barons and guilds to twentieth-century local government units and trade unions.’

—J.C.D. Clark, ‘The History of Britain: a Composite State in a Europe des Patries?’

When we talk about ‘the Blob’, we talk about a further, sadly flourishing manifestation of that same corporatism. Where Thatcher made inroads against the power of the ‘twentieth-century local government units and trade unions’, the hydra soon spawned new heads. The ‘Next Steps’ initiative transformed our model of ministerial accountability and set about the distribution of power into ‘executive agencies’ which would, in time, come to have their own view of how the country should be run. The European Union added a new legal authority above Parliament, and between the EU and the incorporation of human rights law domestically, judicial review has emerged as a powerful and autonomous check on ministerial action. The creation of devolved assembles with legislative powers has created rival centres within the state, with the threat of separatism always available to extract new concessions. The expanding realm of the managed economy, starting with the creation of ‘quasi-markets’, but by now well on the path to reaching many parts of the true private sector, has not only required new agencies to ‘manage’ the regulatory process, but a range of client organisations dependent on them for funding and approval.

Assisted unintentionally by Thatcher and Major, enthusiastically by Blair and Brown, and then spinelessly by their Tory successors, our new Blob corporatism dominates the state and sets the terms of our politics. The experience of fourteen years of Tory rule is a continuing story of electoral success negated by ‘the institutions’. The exception of Brexit — the decapitation of one of the Hydra’s most aggressive heads — proves the rule here, because Tory ministers did not intend for it to happen, expected it not to happen, and were left helpless and clueless as it did happen. But even once Brexit was finally realised, normal service soon resumed, and the Johnson government — and Truss, and Sunak — were repeatedly left as passive spectators to a country they did not truly govern.

The alternative to the Blob is the restoration of responsible government. A marker of the long degeneration and recent collapse of the Tory party is that this idea, such a rich and central part of the British political tradition, is barely even understood any more. Tory politicians will line up and tell you some half-understood, Americanised idea of our constitution; will prattle on about the importance of protecting ‘institutions’ which often didn’t even exist before 1997; or will wax lyrical about the ‘little platoons’ of civil society. Yet they will rarely, if ever, speak up for the need for ministers to be able to exercise power undivided and to be held fully responsible for both their successes and failures. The loss of the language of responsible government is why Theresa May’s failed ministry was allowed to go on so long, and why even after it the later Tory governments failed to comprehend the trap they were in. (Not to say they seemed especially keen to do so.)

This year’s election has returned the enthusiasts of Blob corporatism to government under Keir Starmer, although seemingly not at all refreshed by their time out of office. Already the signs are there that this will not be forever: only three months in, and the country seems to be tiring of its new masters, for which few people voted and even fewer will admit having voted. Perhaps the best reading of the election is that while our politicians have lost the thread of responsible government, Brexit has restored the idea deep in the British imagination that, with no EU to blame any more, when a government fails — as the Tories clearly did — they deserve to be ejected from office.

We will soon see early indications of whether the Tories are able to learn and adapt from that lesson; it certainly feels already that, in 2028 or 2029, there may be a brutal sequel to 2024, but this time with Labour taking the fall. That opens the possibility of a new reforming government, of unknown party, which may grasp the opportunity to turn the tide against Blob corporatism and go some way to restoring responsible government. For that reason, it is worth starting to think through some simple reforms which can help to pare back the Blob quickly and effectively.

As already noted, the Blob has many facets and I can’t cover them all here. The legal establishment, devolved institutions, and the regulatory bureaucracy each require specific attention. Here, I focus on the world of ‘public administration’ — of how government acts, or fails to act, because of the civil service and the ‘quango’ state. Ensuring that the Whitehall machine is restored to ministerial control is the first, most important step.

Recovering the national interest

You may have heard that Britain’s Civil Service is a ‘Rolls-Royce’, dedicated to the pursuit of the national interest, something which goes beyond party politics. And, as a politician, so long as you know how to rev up that ‘Rolls-Royce’, it can take you almost wherever you wish.

Unfortunately, this is a fairy tale. Like many fairy tales, deep within it, there may be something which was once real, but has now been lost to time. Let’s park the ‘Rolls-Royce’ for a moment: whatever may have been true in the past, in the Britain of 2024, there is no evidence that the Civil Service are pursuing the ‘national interest’, nothing more and nothing less. It’s not even as if this is a secret: officials and their representatives have repeatedly asserted that the Civil Service Code’s requirement that they ‘comply with the law and uphold the administration of justice’ should be viewed in the context of international law, with it standing, at least implicitly, as a supreme authority over the commands of merely national ministers.

We should note that this is a dubious interpretation of the Civil Service Code to say the least: the Civil Service Code simply says ‘the law’, and in Britain’s dualist legal system, international law only exists in domestic law as parliament chooses (or chooses not) to incorporate it. The assertion that ‘the law’ now includes potentially all elements of international law is, on the face of it, an ongoing attempt by officials to usurp Parliament’s authority. Some of the Civil Service’s other activities seem to confirm this interpretation: for instance, the creation of the Cabinet Manual by Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell was an attempt to assert officials’ authority over the formation of a new coalition government in 2010 (fortunately, this has been pared back by the return of single-party government since then). The Ministerial Code is another means by which officials, especially Sue Gray, have sought to control ministers.

Famously, O’Donnell is also the Cabinet Secretary who commented that ‘when I was at the Treasury, I argued for the most open door possible to immigration… I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare, not national welfare’. This seems to undermine — to say the least — the idea that Civil Servants are currently all faithfully pursuing the British national interest, given that O’Donnell quite explicitly said that he, the most senior Civil Servant in the land, wasn’t. (See also: the bizarre spectacle of Britain paying Mauritius to take sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory.)

Most officials probably aren’t quite as bad as O’Donnell. Most of them aren’t open borders ideologues, or particularly fixated on ‘human rights’, and many aren’t even in any way ‘left-wing’. The point is that there is no ‘thick’ consensus about the primacy of the pursuit of the ‘national interest’ for Britain’s governing class to draw upon, as there may have been as recently as thirty or forty years ago. And even if there was, we should be clear that it might not be the ‘national interest’ we want it to be. According to the 2021/2 Census, 16 percent of Britain’s population was born abroad, a number which will have risen since then, and may be an underestimate given high levels of illegal immigration. The kind of people who shape our political debates will work hard to make sure that the concept of the ‘national interest’ is disfigured just as much as the ‘rule of law’ is.

In an ideal world, we could rely upon officials to pursue the ‘national interest’ without having to be told. However, in the real world, it is obvious that we need to create mechanisms to force them to do so. To achieve this, I suggest two small, but useful interventions.

Firstly, the Civil Service Code should be modified so that it states explicitly that officials should ‘comply with British law and uphold the administration of justice in Britain’, to avoid any ambiguity as to where officials’ obligations lie.

Secondly, when the Equality Act 2010 is repealed, along with its Public Sector Equality Duty, we should replace it with a new Citizens Act. This new Act will contain a Public Sector Citizen Duty, constituted in a similar fashion, applying to all public sector organisations. All will be required to put the interests of British citizens first in their plans and organisation, and to evaluate policy options with a view to their impact upon British citizens.

The Rolls-Royce back on the road

The idea that British officials still represent a superior administrative workforce is plainly false by this point. Civil Service reform is necessary, and should be comprehensive.

Our current model of administration is wedded to the idea of an independent, objective administrative caste who can act as policymaking partners to ministers; unfortunately, in practice, this idea has long been lost. The post-war expansion of the Welfare State led to a massive increase in civil servant numbers, with the median official increasingly removed from high politics, and more concerned with bed pans and dole claims. Increasingly, our most successful policymaking officials will go through a revolving door, in and out of the Civil Service, going between it and think tanks, investment banks, consultancies, and so on. A wholly closed caste it is no longer.

You can argue that this is just a reflection of their talent — which they can often earn more from outside of the Civil Service — and this change need not necessarily be interpreted wholly negatively: through this ‘revolving door’, civil servants can gain new, useful experience. Nonetheless, once the Civil Service is just another workplace, we could do well to lose some of the po-faced pretence of ‘objectivity’ and ‘independence’.

There are two paths from here, but both depend on separating the policymaking Civil Service from the wider operational workforce. In that policymaking layer, there are clearly returns to having fewer, better officials, more directly accountable to ministers. The two paths are either to seek a return to the idea of distinct, independent Civil Service; or to move to allowing explicitly ‘political’ appointments (the new government has been creeping in this direction anyway). There are pros and cons to either approach, and it’s too big a topic to resolve here.

Bringing quangos to heel

The ‘Next Steps’ reforms under Thatcher, and the proliferation of quangos with operational independence from the government since then, often also taking on policy competencies, has devolved the power of ministers with a loss of accountability. Given the complexity of the modern state, some degree of agency independence can sometimes be valuable, even necessary. However, this autonomy needs to be tightly managed to ensure that it supports — rather than detracts from — responsible government.

If we want to bring the quangos to heel, the first (and most obvious) step is to eliminate as many as possible. Some of this is simply a matter of political will and imagination. Generally speaking, we should seek to remove quangos as delivery agencies wherever there is a path to individual responsibility and competitive commerce as an alternative, even if it involves the creation of much smaller, but more focused public bodies, such as (for instance) a Visa Authority, responsible for buying and selling visas, in place of a range of agencies to manage a failed immigration system.

Focus is important. Some agencies deliver functions which can easily and objectively be measured and reported on, and that allows them to be kept under some semblance of control. Where problems emerge is when agencies are allowed to develop policy competencies, thus becoming independent actors within government. A clear example here is the Climate Change Committee: officially, it is only advisory; in practice, it has been given a wide latitude and authority to pronounce on climate policy, and the Government is expected to respond accordingly. Many of these agencies should be eliminated entirely, but at the very least we need remove some of their executive discretion: tackling the vetocracy, where numerous quangos have to sign off on planning applications, to give but one example, would have substantial benefits, not only for the economy, but would also allow agencies to focus more on the government’s own objectives.

Making decisions on which quangos to eliminate, which to confine, and which to allow to continue as is, is going to be more art than science. In any case, and certainly in the shorter term, quangos will remain a part of the state.

Another important step is to create a separate legal framework for quango chief executives. They should work only at the Prime Minister’s pleasure: it should be possible for the Prime Minister to terminate their employment if he so wishes, as is already the case with ministers. The convention should also be established that all quango chief executives should tender their resignation if the government falls after being defeated at a General Election, allowing for new quango chief executives to be appointed alongside new ministers. This will also help with a wider reshaping of government around fewer, more accountable ministers, and with more political appointees from outside parliament with the power to enact the government’s programme.

While there are arguments for and against an impartial Civil Service, quangos are by their very nature autonomous executive bodies, and responsible government requires them to share accountability for the government’s agenda. Having their role depend on the Prime Minister’s direct confidence will help ensure that incentives are aligned accordingly: if the Prime Minister refuses to bring a quango to heel, then that is their failure alone.

Adding consequence to failure

We have all seen it time and time again: public sector employees who fail upwards or sideways, but never out of the public sector entirely. The sheer range of public bodies means that it is quite possible for senior public sector employees to repeatedly demonstrate gross negligence and terrible performance, and yet sustain a long and lucrative career at the taxpayer’s expense. Failing officials usually aren’t fired, but even when they are, they almost always seem to bounce back.

A step towards addressing this will be a new Public Employment Blacklist, maintained by HM Treasury, and made available to all public organisations along with a legal obligation to check the list before making all employment and contracting decisions. Once a person is placed on the Blacklist, no public body will be able to employ them without the Prime Minister’s specific and time-limited approval (this allows for situations where they have scarce knowledge, but makes the government accountable for that decision).

The Public Employment Blacklist is the kind of mechanism that also needs to be actively used. High-profile inquiries, such as into the grooming gangs cover-up, should be used to begin the initial populating of the Blacklist, to show that it is consequential, and not just a sanction that exists in theory, but not in practice.

Raising the stakes

Every government department and every quango has its ‘stakeholders’ (sometimes, even each other). The merry-go-round of modern governance has it that a department must regularly convene and ‘engage’ with its ‘stakeholders’ to hear about their ‘needs’ so that it can formulate its ‘strategy’. What you won’t see here is any real role for parliament or ministers, who — in this model — are only around to give their blessing to this process, meekly acquiescing to its outcomes.

These so-called ‘stakeholders’ — groups usually led and staffed by professional left-wing activists or those sympathetic to them — are often directly or indirectly funded by the government itself, and many receive further backing from Britain’s many charitable foundations. Through this process, all they can do is gain: they get direct access to the corridors of power, can win policy concessions, and can even obtain more funding, often to deliver programmes that they themselves have advocated for.

You may already have noticed the stench of corruption here, because it’s all around. The evolving ‘hub’ model of governance is the distilled version of this approach, where the department or agency will explicitly create an autonomous unit even further away from ministerial decision-making, instead making stakeholder responsiveness its own purpose:

…this is by design. For all they’re fun to mock, the name ‘hub’ is chosen precisely to fit this new model of governance. The whole point is that it’s not directive, not hierarchical: its specific role is not to command, but to enable its varying stakeholders to carry on with their work — be they quangos, ‘little platoons’ from an increasingly astroturfed ‘civil society’, or ‘delivery partners’ with their eyes on contracts. It doesn’t have operational responsibility but instead it invests in and capacity builds those varying spokes, to help them do more of what they do. It doesn’t have authority but instead it engages all concerned, hosting the conversation but never leading it.

Stopping the merry-go-round means resetting the relationship between the government and its ‘stakeholders’ in order to restore ministerial accountability to the government machine. Some of that is in charities reform, and there are obvious and urgent first steps here. First, removing ‘human rights’ and ‘racial equality and diversity’ from the list of charitable objects, as both are obviously politicised, and reviewing ‘community development’ to ensure that it is not used to continue those agendas under cover. Second, creating a rule that charitable status is compatible with no more than 10% of income coming from public sector organisations. And third, moving the policing of political activity in charitable organisations away from the Charities Commission, and introducing stricter legal criteria, applied by the courts, not the bureaucracy.

Most of all, we need to stop the funding of ‘stakeholders’ by public sector organisations. Except where there are rules-based systems for allocating funding — which deserves an entirely separate treatment, for its creation of a sprawling, Soviet-style bureaucracy — public sector organisations should be prevented from granting funds to organisations without specific ministerial direction, recorded with parliament and perhaps backed by secondary legislation.

Fans of ‘civil society’ will tell us that funding these organisations is often a far better way to achieve social policy goals than trying to achieve the same effect through public sector action, and stopping such funding is thus counter-productive. However, the current funding model is so inherently corrupting of both government and the ‘civil society’ organisations who receive funding (with often no or limited accountability) that it must be brought an end, even if this is sometimes true (and we must seriously doubt how often this is actually true in any case).

A better approach would be to use social policy bonds: define the social policy goals explicitly and measurably (e.g., ‘reduce knife crime in this area by 50% in two years’) and attach sums (‘the Home Office will pay the bondholder £2 billion if this is achieved’) that the government will pay for their achievement, in a financial instrument which can then be auctioned to investors. The price the bond fetches at auction will reflect how feasible that goal is (and if it’s not feasible, then the government will have to reset its expectations), and if the goal isn’t achieved, the taxpayer will not have to pay on a failed policy goal.

In the meantime, the government will not have corrupted itself by playing favourites with ‘stakeholders’. It has not paid any one organisation, or compromised itself by being seen to support their wider activities. Instead, it has created a market demand for action to tackle a specific problem: the money is then managed by investors who are focused on the return, and will seek to deliver it in the most efficient way possible, perhaps making decisions which would be unpalatable to most government officials.

The Blob is not unstoppable

Blob corporatism has been progressing unchecked — Brexit aside — certainly since 1997, and likely since even further back in Britain’s past. Fourteen years of Tory government showed just how dominant Blob corporatism really has become, and how much responsible government has diminished as a genuine alternative.

If a future government is to reverse the trend, then it will have to start by getting a grip on the government machine, restoring power and accountability to ministers. Many of these steps could be taken soon after a new government takes office, maximising the prospects for wider success in acting on other fronts, be it the law, devolution, or the regulatory bureaucracy.

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This article was written by regular Pimlico Journal contributor Thdhmo. Have a pitch? Send it to pimlicojournal@substack.com.

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