We have, of course, been laughing at this for decades. ‘Yes Minister’ is regarded as perhaps the finest British sitcom ever made precisely because it is devastatingly accurate. Sir Humphrey is not a caricature; he is a documentary subject lightly fictionalised. ‘The Thick of It’ is funnier and darker, but its portrait of an institution that treats elected politicians as an irritating management layer to be managed, delayed, and where possible redirected is not satire but observation. The reason these programmes land is that everyone who has encountered Whitehall at close quarters recognises the creature.
Kruger’s diagnosis of the structural problem is precise. The Cabinet Office, created in 1916 to manage Cabinet business, has since Tony Blair expanded nearly five fold to employ over 11,000 staff, becoming the principal source of authority across Whitehall, to the point that 10 Downing Street appears on the official organogram as a subsidiary unit of the Cabinet Office, listed alongside the Office for Veterans’ Affairs and the Public Inquiry Response Unit. The Prime Minister’s office, in other words, is officially a sub-department of the bureaucracy it nominally directs. If you wanted to design a system that maximised the power of unelected officials relative to elected ministers, you could scarcely do better.
The solution proposed is radical but coherent: abolish the Cabinet Office entirely, replace it with an Office of the Prime Minister led by a powerful Chief of Staff appointed directly by the PM, and a new Department of the Civil Service charged with headcount reduction, AI adoption, and transforming Whitehall’s culture and productivity. Ministers would gain real powers to hire and fire civil servants, including their Permanent Secretaries. Quangos would be brought back into departments or scrapped. The model draws on serious international precedents: Australia’s combined Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, which coordinates the whole of government with only 1,000 officials, and Japan’s 2001 reforms, which reduced the number of departments from 22 to 12 after career civil servants had begun running their departments as independent operations, effectively ignoring the Prime Minister’s agenda.
There will be much pearl-clutching.
Here in the USA there is a lot of talk in the news about “threats to democracy.” There is no greater threat to democracy that a permanent civil service whose officers are, to all intents and purposes, impossible to fire, and without whom the government cannot do the people’s business.
I think the reform proposed here could be dramatically transformative for British government. However, one must recognize that the civil service is not a passive blob. They don’t care much about the country, they do care a LOT about their power and budgets. And so they will fight something like this with all their very considerable might. They have had 100 years to spread their tentacles into everything in the country, and will not give up without a fight. There will be no Geneva convention here. They will not hesitate to kill people, for example, and do not be at all surprised when Nigel’s laptop turns up with some horrible CSAM on it. These people are monsters, extremely powerful monsters, and will stop at nothing to maintain their power and budgets. DOGE tried here in the USA to get it under control, and even the might of Musk’s incredible engineering mind could not cut that Gordian knot.
Good luck to Nigel. He really is the last hope for the late great United Kingdom.
I agree with this policy – and I thank Gawain Towler and Perry for bringing attention to it.
Fraser Orr is correct – the people who scream about “threats to democracy” are themselves utterly opposed to democracy, they support rule by officials and “experts”.
Disraeli was correct to oppose the creation of the Civil Service – although he opposed it for the wrong reasons (namely he thought it might get in the way of his Big Government “Social Reform” plans), and the people, such as Gladstone, who thought that professional administrators would save money were mistaken – very radically mistaken.
Senator Roscoe Conkling (the leader of the “Stalwart” anti “reform” faction of the Republicans in the late 19th century) hit the nail on the head – either the elected people rule of they do not rule, personal are policy – if you do not hire, and can not fire, the people carrying out your policies – your policies will NOT be carried out.
“But this means a return to Machine Politics – to a spoils system” – yes it does, and so it should.
Yes Chicago was corrupt under the first Mayor Daley (when the Democrat Mayor and Council could hire and fire officials) – but the city worked – for example, back then, children could read and write when they finished school in Chicago, now Chicago, under the rule of university educated officials and experts, does NOT work – it is just as corrupt as it ever was (indeed MORE corrupt), but it is dysfunctional on top of that. Chicago does-not-work-any-more. The children can not read or write (or understand mathematics), crime is out of control, everything is falling apart – yet taxes and government spending are at record highs (vastly higher than they were under Boss Daley 50 years ago – even taking account of inflation).
And Britain does not work either – nothing works, nothing gets done, but endless money is spent. Rule by “enlightened” officials and “experts” has been a horrible failure.
Disraeli was correct to denounce the idea of an unelected Administrative State as rule by Mandarins on the Imperial Chinese pattern (hence the British nickname for senior officials – “Mandarins”) – but he failed to see that Imperial China was a classic example of “Social Reform” – i.e. a society where the state endlessly orders people about “for their own good”. A century before Prime Minister Disraeli elements within the British establishment had fallen in love with the Prussia of Frederick “the Great” – another society where the state endlessly ordered people about, indeed (as far as I know) the only writer in Britain who was deeply opposed to the Prussian state model was Edmund Burke (someone Disraeli claimed to admire – but did not understand).
The point about Edmund Burke was not, as the British establishment seems to think, that he supported “gradual” “reform” over sudden “reform” – but rather that he, Edmund Burke, supported change in the opposite-direction (OPPOSITE-DIRECTION to that supported by modern British establishment – less regulations, rather than more, less government spending and lower taxes – rather than more government spending and higher taxes, and sound (gold and silver) money – not the Credit Bubbles of governments and bankers.
Mr Burke did not care at all if reform, in the direction that he wanted (what the modern establishment would call “reaction”, as in reactionary-running-dog, rather than “reform” – which, to them, means ever bigger and more controlling government), was sudden and dramatic – for example he repealed centuries of “forstalling and engrossing” regulations with a single Act of Parliament.
As for what to do when a “machine” rigs elections – appealing to officials and “experts” does no good, 2020 Presidential election in the United States shows that, it was not the first election to be rigged – for example 1960 Presidential Election was rigged, and the 1948 United States Senate election in Texas was wildly rigged (Lyndon Johnson was so twisted he was corkscrew).
Appealing to officials, experts, judges (remember the judges in 2020 using “Covid” as a magic word to ignore all election laws) – pointless, does not work. And far from being fearless exposers of corruption – the media (what we used to call the press) are rotten to the core – they will support any level of election rigging if it leads to a “Progressive” outcome, if it leads to “Social Reform”.
Unarmed demonstrations? Ask the J6s how being unarmed turned out for them (especially as we now know that the only violence on that day was either from open servants of the government – or from hidden servants of the government who were operating in various groups, not one of these Agent Provocateurs has been sent to prison for what they did).
No – the only thing that works in reversing a rigged election, sometimes works (sadly not always – the God of Battles is NOT always on the side of the Good Guys), is what was done in Athens Tennessee in 1946. And that will NOT work in a big city – only in a relatively small community, yet another reason to get out of the big cities.
If only all this were NOT so – if only officials and judges would insist on voting in person, with proper I.D. (proof of citizenship) and for the paper ballots (no machines) to be counted in public – but do not hold your breath waiting for this in the corrupt cities of the United States.
I am most heartened at this news. It looks as if Danny Kruger gets it. A Reform government will be destroyed by the blob if it does not destroy the blob first. It is kill or be killed. So getting rid of the Cabinet Office is a good start, and I am sure he knows that it is just that, a start. There will be much more work to be done, but I hope it will be done in a planned and coordinated way. Elon Musk’s chainsaw did not chop out nearly enough dead wood.
JohnK.
Agreed Sir – agreed on all the points you make in your comment.
I read a historical study many years ago that talked about the spoils system and how it actually worked, and it made sense to me. Imagine if, when a business was sold, the new owner was forbidden to fire anyone, or even to fire any of the managers! Though there is the problem that if an owner gets rid of actually necessary and functional employees, the value of their investment falls—they have skin in the game—but elected officials don’t see that happen if they wreck government agencies that are actually doing something useful; I’m not sure what way there is to check their using government jobs as payoffs to their supporters, much as the Democratic machines in the US seem to do now.
As Frazer Orr points out, the civil servants are the experts at office politics and have had 100 or so years to hone their skills and train their successors. The politicians are the amateurs, and woefully unprepared amateurs at that. The politicians are appointed to head a department until the next cabinet reshuffle (18 months to two years) or, at the worst, until the next election – a maximum of 5 years. No wonder the civil servants run rings around them.
One way to attack their organisations. Who signs their pay cheques? Simply stop paying those departments deemed useless and when they object, use the same delaying tactics on them as they employ against any policy they don’t like.
A few months of not paying the mortgage and eating might concentrate their minds and/or persuade them to seek alternative employment.
Take a leaf out of the Tyrant’s Handbook. Make the civil service a branch of the army and then you can court martial and shoot the buggers if they piss you off. /sarc, as the youngsters say.
From Gemini AI:
“Cabinet Office: Viewed by some as a bloated administrative layer that exists to coordinate other departments rather than delivering front-line public services directly.”
In computing terms these are called abstraction layers. I have a Logitech mouse (and very good it is too) but the driver software is built on Chrome which means it is 40MB! The first PC I owned had a 40MB HDD and that could handle Word, Excel, quite a few games, other software and all my files fine. Now I need that much disk space for a mouse driver! Back in the day I could load the mouse driver (and other drivers) into HIMEM. Needed for games because with MSDOS you had to keep your precious first 640K as clean as possible. Yes, I used to create boot floppies with custom CONFIG.SYS files for games. Try telling that one to the kiddies!
So, that’s 11,000 civil serpents co-cordinating other civil serpents which obviously leads to confusion and inefficiency and the only solution Whitehall will provide is to hire more and more and more… Including Czars! It’s like post 9/11 when the report stated that the attack was not thwarted because all the TLAs weren’t co-operating properly… and the solution was to create yet another one, the DHS.
But back to computing and where this analogy falls apart. Ludicrous though a mouse driver the size of my first PC’s entire HDD is it’s OK because my current rig has 64GB DDR4 and a 1TB SSD (seperate graphics and a 2TB HDD as well). So, bloated though that driver might be, it doesn’t matter. The same cannot be said about the country which has not become orders of magnitude larger, richer or more populous over the 33 years since I bought that second-hand Elonex.
Gladstone hoped that professional administrators would save money and provide better services – sadly he was mistaken, on both counts.
However, the real driving force behind creating the British Administrative State (although it was small at first) was Sir Charles Trevelyan – who, after a rather poor record in India (although he claimed it was a very good record) was put in charge of Ireland in the late 1840s (the Irish did not get to vote for who was in charge) – under his rule between a quarter and a third of the population either died or fled the country.
Trevelyan’s answer to the potato famine (which hit some parts of Ireland – not all of Ireland was dependent on the potato) was to endlessly increase taxes (in a Poor Law system that had only been created in 1838 – by Lords Russell and Stanley, the same people behind the creation of the Government School system in Ireland in 1831) – and to make areas of Ireland that had not gone bust, pay for areas that were bust. Thus dragging all of Ireland into Hell. Higher taxes crush an economy – and there is no such thing (contrary to Trevelyan – or Henry George) as taxes that just hit landowners – all taxes are passed on.
That this person, Sir Charles Trevelyan, was considered to have an excellent record, and to be an expert on “Administrative Reform” shows just how demented the British establishment was – even back then.
NickM – yes adding administrators to make the existing administrators better, is crazy.
So was the policy of “Tony” Blair of paying higher government employees “private sector salaries” (telephone number salaries) and expecting things to get better – the classic “Market Socialist” absurdity of thinking that pay and perks for government managers would make government like a private business – in reality private business relies on private-ownership (private ownership is not some optional thing – it is foundational).
Up to 1997 government service was not wildly highly paid and it was at least in theory apolitical – wearing political symbols at work (such as badges and lanyards expressing support for homosexual activism) was not the practice before 1997.
As for “more money – pay them more money” – the head of the demented HS2 rail project is paid close to a million Pounds a year – paying him this money does not make the project any less demented.
A 100 Billion Pounds for a rail line, which has no stops, between cities that ALREADY HAVE a rail link.
So, in reality, it is 100 Billion Pounds for NOTHING.
William H. Stoddard.
There is an important difference between the Democrat city machines of the past and now.
Tammy Hall in New York could actually do-things – get-things-done.
Even in the 1960s Mayor Daley in Chicago had real power – he could hire and fire people, if people failed – he could remove and replace them, right down to the front-line.
Modern Mayors have little power over things – Civil Service rules and union power have castrated democracy.
Franklin Roosevelt (yes even Franklin Roosevelt) was against the unionization of government service – because unless the elected political leader also controls the unions, if government service is unionized the elected political leader is just a fairy on top of the Christmas Tree – little real power.
All they can do now is spend money – and they spend and spend and spend, and the spending does not achieve anything.
I have a theory about blogs: they were taken over by the Civil Serpents years ago and they use all these words to distract us from the pot of water we’re in getting ever warmer. Because the message is always the same: things are bad and getting worse, you have almost no rights left, and you’re getting poorer, weaker, sicker, every year, and you’d better shut up about it and vote for X. Because only X makes any sense.
Prove me wrong: how has anything written on this blog, or any other, led to turning back any of the evil we read about? Reagan couldn’t do it. I’m afraid Trump 2.0 is not going to prevail; as Fraser Orr points out, Musk has already failed with DOGE. I had such high hopes…they fooled me again!
And now they don’t even have to work at it…they just use AI to post articles, create apparent commenters, etc.
But rest assured, I’m real…I just clicked the “I’m not a robot” below to prove it!
One specific statement? One specific poster or commenter? Nope. Won’t happen.
What blogs do – what any conversation does – is to ensure that a philosophy is getting out there, and shared, and discussed. It lets us all hone our own arguments in person. It strengthens resolve. It keeps it all alive, when the environment is less than friendly.
Or, we could all just be Jeremy Kaufman. 😉 (Is this guy – head of the New Hampshire Lib Party – for real? Muscular libertarianism?)
bobby b – quite so Sir.
The first mouse driver I wrote was about 80 bytes or so of code, with a bit more setup code.
Pearls will be clutched, all right, if a sensible government is incoming; wrists will be pressed to foreheads, fainting couches will be fainted upon, on a grand scale. Which is to say, the Blob will mire you down and prevent your changes, with the only tactic the democratic Left really has, which is procedural miserabilism.
So it nust be done quickly, and well-prepared well ahead of time, therefore. Get Sir Humphries out on Day One. The same with his followers, his allies, and all the other ponds of glue that will trap PM Farage if he lets them. Bring the axe, bring the autopen, strike hard, strike fast. No program reviews, no commissions of inquiry, no delays, or they’ll do you like they did DOGE. (I fear General Musk left his flank exposed, and his war elephants got bogged down and destroyed.)
Thanks, bobby b and Paul Marks. And sorry for my rant! Sometimes the frustration just boils over.