2025: Now Or Never

The government is forever talking about growth and reform, much as previous governments have done in recent times, yet somehow there is a growing scepticism that it will fare any better. Or if better only at the margin. Right across the spectrum of public administration and national utilities there is a sense of late or non delivery.

Starmer knows this. But he does not know quite what to do. So there is a suggestion that the civil service must stop ‘managing decline’ and a plea to regulators and watchdogs to come up with good ideas.

The best idea would be to close them all down. We have created a byzantine muddle of regulars, watchdogs and forecasters, all with statutory functions, which makes it impossible to govern.  The country is stagnating and has had flatlining growth more or less for the whole of this century. Productivity per head is lower than all competitors and partners. Huge Departments of State preside over the greatest accumulation of non-delivery and under performance in our history.

Government has to take back control and own outcomes. Smaller Ministries with responsibility to deliver in short order, with  ministers’ heads on the block for failure, with nobody and nothing to hind behind or blame. During the war we had a Ministry of Aircraft Production when we needed planes, a Ministry of Food to make sure we had enough to eat, to name but two.

It is very nearly too late to put this right, the culture of safety first and minimising risk is suffocating the country. Process trumps outcome at every level. Due process is a holy grail.

Well its time to come alive and get real.