The first was the Church of England, which tore its liturgical and theological inheritance in tatters and now presides over a moral irrelevance in the life of the nation. The grandest was the Bank of England. In May 1997 a Labour government handed control of interest rates to unelected officials, and Paul Tucker, later the Bank’s deputy governor, has noted the irony that it took a government of the left to do what the right had long talked about.⁵² The courts followed. In his 2019 Reith Lectures Jonathan Sumption, recently retired from the Supreme Court, described foreign policy, military operations and the prerogative powers of the Crown having “one by one yielded to the power of judges”.⁵³ His critics say he exaggerates, and Policy Exchange’s Judicial Power Project has spent a decade arguing about where the line should sit, but nobody disputes the direction of travel.
Then came the quangos. The number of central government public bodies rose from 474 in January 2015 to 603 in January 2025.⁵⁴ Last month a Cabinet Office minister told the Commons there were 306 arm’s-length bodies, a third of them due for reform, while a Conservative MP put the true figure at over 400, spending more than £390 billion a year, one pound in every three the government spends.⁵⁵ The definitions are as slippery as the numbers. What none of these bodies has to do is face an election. Cobbett would have recognised the arrangement at once, and so would Wade. In 2023–24 at least 343 quango staff were paid more than £200,000.⁵⁶ We’ve just stopped calling them sinecures.
Its enemies have a name for this world. The Blob.
– Gawain Towler demonstrating once again that Reform really do understand the shape and nature of the enemy. A long read that is well worth your time.
There is only one thing worse than a government institution controlled by elected politicians – and that is a government institution that is NOT controlled by elected politicians.
For example, the Bank of England should not exist (should not have been created in 1694) – if government wants a war it should NOT finance it by borrowing (which is what the Bank of England was created for – to make government borrowing less difficult), it should have the guts to pay for it by taxation then-and-there – and if the people do not want the tax, they do not (really) want the war.
However, if the Bank of England is to exist – it should be under the control of people who the public can vote out of office, NOT people whose loyalty is to the “International Community” – i.e. the international Corporate State, International Criminal Court and all that totalitarian rule-by-experts stuff.
As for the Church of England – sadly (sadly) perhaps it is a good thing that it has become irrelevant, as it now teaches that Islamic forces are wonderful, the measure of “compassion” is how much you support even higher government spending, and a de facto open-gates policy towards endless-vicious-migrants.
As for Quangos – some politicians (the worse ones) love them – as they mean that decisions (and, they hope, the blame for bad decisions) is taken out of their hands – the Bank of England is itself a Quango, and, as Gawain Towler (what a splendid name – and it is his real name) points out – Quangos (non elected bodies with the power of government) now control most aspects of what government does – most of which it should NOT to, but if it does do – should be under elected, not unelected, control.
Last point – the JUDGES are Quangocrats – they are not elected by the people, and they are not appointed by elected politicians. The judges are appointed by a committee set up by Prime Minister Blair – and the beliefs of the judges are very different, indeed very much opposed to, the beliefs of most people.
If a government was ever elected that really did want “right wing” reform – it would have dismiss (yes – dismiss) the judges. In theory a simple Act of Parliament could do this – but would any elected government have the courage to dismiss the judges?
We are unlikely to find out – as the right is split (indeed is a basically a circular firing squad) and not a single newspaper (still important in Britain) supports either Refore or Restore. Although the lady is a very good person in many ways – I do not see Kemi B. dismissing the judges.
By the way – this is not just true in Britain, it is true everywhere in the Western world. If you really want to roll back the “Progressive” changes of the last few decades, you are going to have to dismiss the judges – and appoint “right wing” judges in their place. Modern judges are loyal to “Progressive” doctrines. This can be seen in the United States, Italy, Israel (the fanatically biased Israeli Supreme Court) and just about everywhere else.
“Independent judges” now means leftist judges, “the rule of law” now means the rule of the left. This is why the international establishment (which is leftist) supports these slogans – that mean the opposite of what they meant a century ago.
The phrase “right wing bureaucracy” would be an oxymoron as all bureaucrats naturally think that things would be better (for them, undoubtedly) if they controlled everything. It follows that for he people to thrive the bureaucracy should be as small and weak as possible, small enough to drown in a bathtub, as one of my favorite quotes goes. AI presents with a wonderful opportunity to replace tens of thousands of useless chair polishers with a shed in Swindon. How about it, Nige?
Roue le Jour agreed – bureaucracy, whether official government or corporate, is the natural environment of Collectivists.
As for Mr Farage – not one newspaper supports the Reform Party – or the Restore Party (and newspapers still matter in Britain) – as for television and radio, only GB News treats him well (after all he has a very long association with them) – the other television and radio stations present him as evil (much like the vast majority fo the media in the United States do with President Trump) – and the House of Commons committee “investigating” Mr Farage is made up of his enemies.
And the education system in Britain, like most Western nations, is controlled by the left – the more someone is “educated” by the modern system, the more deluded they are.
Whether “Prime Minister Nigel Farage” would manage to break the rule of officials and “experts” – we will never know, because he is not going to be Prime Minister.
I like Kemi Badenoch – but the very positive media coverage the lady gets is a little concerning, if Kemi was going to smash the system (which is what desperately needs to be done) – would the media coverage be so positive? Remember even “right wing” British newspapers such as the Telegraph are joined-at-the-hip with elements of the state.
As Mark Littlewood and others have pointed out – the right desperately needs to unite, or there is no chance (none) of winning an election, but Nigel and Kemi continue to exchange insults (and the attacks on Suella Braverman are utterly weird – of course “British” is a political idenity and “English” is an ethnic idenity – that was not contraversal up to very recently) – and both insulting Mr Lowe (who makes the split even more hopeless – a three way split now). The British right has become a circular firing squad.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the Deep State will soon no longer have to bribe or blackmail Republican members of Congress – because the Democrats (who are utterly evil – just how evil the Dems are now, has yet to be generally understood – even by some people on this site) will soon control Congress – then there will be no limit on the Deep State (none) – with the President and his family and allies ruthlessly persecuted and, eventually, destroyed. What happened in South Korea will happen in the United States – but it will be vastly worse in the United States.
So there will be no help for Britain from the United States – because the United States itself is now likely to fall.
At this point it would take a miricle to save the United States (what will happen after Congress falls will be truly awful – again many people do not understand just how evil, and I use the word “evil” after due consideration, the Democrats now are) – and, contrary to Dr Gabb and co, the West can NOT survive without the United States.
There were a couple of newspapers (the Express and the Mail) today that carried articles by Nigel Farage – but they were on the European Union, and Mr Burnham’s vicious lies about the Independence Referendum of 2016. These newspapers also carried articles by Kemi Badenoch – and it is Kemi, not Nigel, they will support at election time.
Neither Kemi or Nigel will accept a deal with each other (or with Rupert Lowe – they seem to regard the Restore Party people as Alien Space Monsters) – Nigel Farage has not forgiven the Conservatives for 14 years of failure against the Deep State (or “the Blob” as some call it) – and Kemi Badenoch sometimes (sometimes) says that “Britain is not broken” – which is contradicted by the obvious fact that Britain is in a terrible situation – and is going to get a lot worse.
The idea that Britain has serious problems, but that society is basically sound – would be true of the year was, say, 1960, but it is not 1960, it is 2026.