As historian C. Northcote Parkinson warned, “delay is the deadliest form of denial”. A third of Britain’s under-30s say they’d trade some freedom for a leader who decides quickly. If progress feels glacial, it’s not because the system is inherently cumbersome. It’s because politicians have chosen to delay.
The latest poll from Adam Smith Insights reveals that one in three young Brits say they would prefer an “authoritarian system with a leader who can make decisions quickly, even at the cost of some democratic freedoms.” Among young voters of the three major parties, the appetite for decisiveness is even clearer: half of Reform UK voters, and well over a third of young Conservatives and Labour voters, say they would trade liberty for velocity. At the same time, 59 per cent of these young people think politicians are not addressing the issues that matter most to them.
Young people look at problems — expensive housing, rising crime, sluggish growth, a crumbling NHS — and see a political system that wrings its hands. If speed is the demand, here’s the good news: the UK, unique among mature democracies, already has the tools to act quickly.
Unlike countries with codified constitutions full of built-in vetoes, Britain runs on parliamentary sovereignty and political convention. If a government has a majority, it can line up the votes and pass sweeping changes in weeks, sometimes days. It can change taxes overnight which take effect through a Budget resolution. Even without Parliamentary approval, ministers can take decisive action through powers that they already hold. The British state is, in other words, built for speed.
We know this because we’ve witnessed it. Restrictions were introduced and lifted with extraordinary speed during COVID. Sanctions regimes, immigration rules, and counter-terror powers are updated rapidly. Whitehall can be lightning-fast on procurement when it chooses to be, standing up large programmes within weeks.
If the machinery is so nimble, the sluggishness is a choice. Governments wrap straightforward decisions in layers of self-imposed caution: endless consultations, “listening exercises,” taskforces, pilot-after-pilot. Departments over-correct for the risk of judicial review by treating every step as a potential legal landmine. Ministers outsource judgment to arm’s-length bodies and stakeholder forums, then wait for “consensus” that never arrives. The Treasury insists on one more round of appraisal; someone somewhere wants a new cross-government strategy. Nothing here is mandated by the constitution. It’s culture.
As Katie Lam MP has explained, our constitutional set-up is remarkably permissive: if ministers agree what they want to do, and are willing to defend it, they can usually do it quickly. The hard part is not the law; it’s leadership. Young voters intuit this. When half of Reform-inclined 20-somethings prefer an authoritarian shortcut, they’re not pining for censorship. They’re screaming, “Do something.”
Authoritarianism doesn’t actually guarantee competence or speed; it guarantees less proceduralism, but the results differ significantly. Democracies earn legitimacy by explaining trade-offs, submitting decisions to scrutiny, and living with accountability. The UK can preserve those virtues and still move quickly by using the tools it already has.
And none of this requires curtailing free speech, neutering Parliament, or rewriting the constitution. It requires ministers to choose action over abdication, and to take the heat that comes with governing.
Britain … needs elected officials who will use the constitutional power they already possess
When 33 per cent of 18-30s flirt with authoritarianism for the sake of “getting things done,” they are expressing a values-neutral preference for competence: stop talking, start doing. You can see the same sentiment in their broader answers; most don’t think politicians are addressing the issues that matter. Far from ideological extremism, it’s a rational response to a political class that has performed the remarkable trick of being both powerful and paralysed.
Britain does not need a dictator to build homes or tackle crime. It needs elected officials who will use the constitutional power they already possess, openly, lawfully, and quickly. Young Britons are right to demand decisions. The question is whether politicians will choose to deliver.
