Unlikely though it may seem, Sir Keir Starmer has become a convert to Dominic Cummings’s analysis of the British state.
Giving evidence to the House of Commons Liaison Committee last week, the Prime Minister delivered a damning verdict on the dysfunction holding back government.
He said: “As Prime Minister… every time I go to pull a lever, there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arms-length bodies that mean the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be.”
That’s the most powerful person in the land, saying that when he makes decisions, he is obstructed by red tape and bureaucracy. An executive which cannot use its executive powers to get things done is an obvious problem.
A year ago, Starmer criticised the civil service, complaining that “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”. His recent remarks go further, suggesting that the issue is not just management culture but the structure and function of the state itself.
The alienation of power from democratically accountable politicians to quangos, the gumming up of decisions through costly consultations, the application of endless regulations which invite further delays and costs in court challenges – each of these is grit in the wheels.
Cumulatively, they create friction and delay, and raise the price of all activity. Combine them with a risk-averse Whitehall culture and it’s a recipe for nothing ever happening, at vast expense.
This isn’t hypothetical. It’s all around us.
We’re reliant on costly and imported energy, but we last switched on a new nuclear power station 30 years ago. The next – Hinkley Point C – is required to spend £700m on protective acoustic systems, which it is estimated will save the lives of 0.083 salmon and 0.028 sea trout annually. That’s one salmon every 12 years.
HS2 ran wildly over budget, including £120m spent on a protective tunnel for bats, on a flimsy evidence base. The Lower Thames Crossing still has not been built, and it has taken 63,330 pages of consultation documents to achieve its continued non-existence. I could list more examples.
Even more compelling is the disillusionment of the electorate.
People evidently want change, and keep voting for it, but things stay the same. Politicians rightly seek to answer that demand, and then keep falling short once in office. The reason is that the power of elected representatives – and therefore the power of the people – is unduly constrained.
The twin questions of “Why doesn’t anything work?” and “Why do we get so little when we pay so much?” haven’t arisen by accident; they are directly linked, and reflect a structural problem in our state. If the underlying problems which give rise to those issues aren’t addressed, then voters won’t accept this decline; they will turn to those offering more radical change, be it the Greens on the left or Reform on the right.
This is what Starmer has come to realise. It’s quite an about-turn, which can’t have come easily to him, given his outlook and professional background.
In opposition, Labour’s analysis was quite clear: the issue was that the Tories were advocating the wrong policies, mismanaging relationships with the public sector, and were incapable. Their solution was that a Labour government would have better ideas, a better working relationship with the public sector, and generally be better at the job.
The uncomfortable discovery that this was a mistake comes after 18 frustrating months of trying to get things done, while being held up at almost every turn. Both the time and political capital available to the Prime Minister are dwindling, but at least he has realised what the real challenge is.
The question is: will he overcome it? He told the committee last week that “I want to cut down on regulation generally, and within government”.
If Starmer means it, then great. There are some signs that he does. Last week’s new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) launch liberates housebuilding from excessive regulation on small sites and near commuter rail stations, and rightly so.
But these are small steps in the face of a deeply embedded institutional and cultural problem.
While one arm of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government makes progress with the NPPF, officials in the same ministry are considering legally requiring every planning application to be signed off by an architect – a piece of protectionist makework that will further burden homeowners and builders.
The Prime Minister is right when he rails against undue restrictions and commits to cutting down regulation. But the truth is that almost all of the obstructions that he finds so frustrating were created by politicians in the first place. His own Government created 25 new quangos – one a week – in its first five months in office.
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This didn’t happen by accident, but by a combination of short-termism and self-indulgence. Every new regulation waved through because it was well-intentioned, or because it would “only” cost a few quid a time and “only” involve a few more pages of forms, led us to this point.
Politicians have prioritised a desire not to look bad over the need to engage with genuine trade-offs. That’s how we ended up reliant on imported energy while spending a fortune to save one twelfth of a salmon a year, and with water shortages in a country famous for being rainy.
The cost of this error has, so far, been borne by the people, in our taxes, pay packets, job opportunities and housing costs. The Prime Minister’s remarks, and the voter revolts on left and right, suggest that it is now imposing a price on politicians, too. Tragically, his Damascene conversion may have come just too late.
Mark Wallace is chief executive of Total Politics Group
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