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.