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.