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So Dominic Cummings was ultimately right, at least in his honest analysis. Chief strategist under Boris Johnson He declared his innocence After Keir Starmer echoed his accusations of the failure of the civil service. There must be a name for this new consensus. Dharmic, anyone?
And after Sage portfolios specifications He has at least a partial point. It is surprising to count the areas where Starmer aligns with his Tory predecessors. For all their ideological differences, Labor seems to share much of the Cummings/Boris Johnson diagnosis of why the UK is not working as well as it should.
This does not mean indulging superficial claims that there are no major philosophical differences between the two major parties. It is difficult to imagine, for example, the Conservatives imposing higher payroll taxes on employers at the levels mentioned in Rachel Reeves' budget, even though their unaffordable pre-election tax cuts were surely aided by the knowledge that they would not be around to face the consequences. .
But there are broad areas of consensus. Last week, the Prime Minister rebuked civil servants for too often relaxing at home “A lukewarm bath of managed regression.” Four days later, his Cabinet Secretary and Chief Lieutenant, Pat McFadden, announced that Whitehall had to learn new methods and attract more experience. This second speech revived memories of a similar, if more glowing, speech Michael Gove lecture In the early days of Johnson's government.
Thursday saw the first installment of Labour's planning reforms, aimed at breaking the regulatory deadlock holding back the construction of homes and infrastructure. At their core are centrally delegated housing targets – something else Cummings and Johnson proposed, only to see it thwarted by their own MPs fearful of a local backlash. Even Labor agreed to rethink Environmental guarantees Stopping developments that pollute rivers, a move she opposed.
On environmental regulations, Starmer's speech last week contained a lengthy attack on the “ridiculous spectacle” of planet Earth. £100m bat tunnel Disrupting HS2, the country's largest infrastructure project. Starmer also displays Johnson's general impatience with other regulators he sees as obstacles to growth, allies say.
Alongside the planning, Labor also continued the pension reforms initiated by the Conservatives under Jeremy Hunt, going so far as to create new surplus funds that could be cajoled or perhaps forced to invest more in UK infrastructure or businesses. One could also add welfare reform and further devolution of power to areas of common purpose.
But consensus is not enough. Cummings may claim vindication but the Conservatives have not lived up to their rhetoric. If Starmer is following their path, he should know why. The first reason is that reform is not achieved through discourse. It's slow, detailed and difficult. Cummings' management style was not compatible with his analytical skills – and in the end he was not even able to build an alliance with his boss. for him Lists of beatings, threats and exaggeration It simply created a sense of political vendetta. Others, like Goff, lost focus due to generalized attacks on “the point.”
It is dangerous to invest heavily in the idea of government as a startup. Agile work processes are effective for new and discrete projects, but organizations whose decisions affect the lives of millions cannot “move fast and break things.” Instead, Macfadyen has preached small-scale pilot projects, but this is a slow road for a rushing government. Ultimately reforming Whitehall must also mean taming the often obstructive Treasury.
Finally, politics incentivizes those outside power to oppose even measures they know make sense. The primary challenge in planning reform for housing and infrastructure (prisons, railway lines, nuclear power plants) has been opportunistic opposition parties seeking electoral benefits from playing the NIMBY card.
So planning reforms will be a major test of Starmer's resolve. Confronting naturalists and skeptics among MPs and councilors is essential if Labor is to get close to its already ambitious target of 1.5 million new homes in Parliament.
Starmer's first months failed to build confidence in his ability to handle the machine. The most successful reforms have come from ministers, like Gove or David Blunkett in education, who came into office with clear intention and avoided big change in favor of tackling manageable problems one at a time. The job arrived unprepared And with very little of its agenda implemented in detail. Key reforms, not least the NHS, are heading into next year – which is doubly worrying because it could take years for their effects to be felt.
Critics also question Starmer's selection of Chris Wormald, a Whitehall insider and accomplished insider, as the new Cabinet Secretary. Starmer's allies worry that failure to follow through will prompt voters to turn to political troublemakers like Nigel Farage and those conservatives who have increasingly come to support Argentina's dissident libertarian president Javier Miley.
What worries allies is that a Starmer government will be just the latest example of a shrinking circle in which major parties can see the change needed, but are unable to drive it forward. Another example of politics that wants the end but cannot find the means.
