Phase two of Keir Starmer’s government and his so-called “Plan for Change” is now in full swing after his first big cabinet reshuffle last week. But let’s be honest, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter.
Now I’m not being glib for the sake of it, and I could make the case that it doesn’t matter because of the mediocrity of the ministers shuffled around, but the truth runs a lot deeper than that. It doesn’t matter who Starmer places in which position because the politicians themselves aren’t really in charge.
Everyone competing for power in Britain promises to solve the country’s problems, whether it is fixing the economy, tackling migration, or improving public services. Yet the harsh reality is that it doesn’t matter how good a policy proposal is, or how well thought through it may be, if it cannot be implemented. A reform that cannot be carried out is not worth the paper it is written on, and in Britain today, the ability to implement change is the real problem. It’s less government by think tank, more government as a think tank — where policy papers are produced, and press releases are sent only to end up gathering dust in the archives.
Unlike how the public imagines the machinery of government to work, the real power is not in Downing Street or Whitehall, but in the vast quango state that has grown unchecked for decades. A shadow state which politicians of all parties have either consciously or unconsciously created and allowed to fester.
The new quango database from the TaxPayers’ Alliance has now revealed the sheer scale of this shadow state, broken down by sponsoring department, budgets, expenditure, and more. In 2023, 24, 438 quangos burned through £391 billion, almost a third of all public spending. To put that into perspective, it is more than we spend on welfare, more than we spend on health, and more than we spend on defence. If quango spending were grouped as a department of state, it would be the single biggest in government by a long shot. Of the £411 billion in income these bodies received, £376 billion came directly from taxpayers. This is not a marginal issue, or an obscure corner of the budget, but an enormous share of national expenditure being managed by bodies that voters cannot remove at the ballot box.
The quango state is not only about vast sums of money, but also about the sheer number of people employed in this parallel system of governance. Almost half a million staff now work in quangos, roughly the same as the population of Liverpool, larger than the population of Newcastle, and more than the population of Cardiff. An entire city’s worth of quangocrats is making decisions with little accountability, shaping policies and spending taxpayers’ money, while ministers stand at the despatch box taking questions about decisions they more often than not did not directly make or have any real influence over.
Predictably, Tony Blair sits at the top of the quango creation leaderboard, having established 92 new quangos during his time in office, including Ofcom, Ofgem and The Supreme Court. John Major followed with 5,5, including quangos such as the Environment Agency and Arts Council of Wales. Then David Cameron, with 54, setting up quangos such as the Office for Budget Responsibility and Network Rail.
It is a pattern that cuts across parties, with successive governments hooked on creating new bodies regardless of the rhetoric about cutting red tape or streamlining bureaucracy. Depressingly, the last Prime Minister who served a full year and did not create a single quango was Sir Anthony Eden in the 1950s.
Britain has a state that is too large, too costly, and too confusing
Complaining about the “quangocracy” is not an abstract concern. The proliferation of regulators issuing rules without real democratic oversight, with politicians themselves being unaware of many of them, points to the same conclusion: Britain has a state that is too large, too costly, and too confusing. The consequence of that reality is that governments cannot properly govern. Manifesto commitments may look good during election campaigns and cabinet reshuffles may provide excitement for the Westminster bubble, but if power is lost in a maze of quangos and bureaucracy, then nothing gets done and ultimately nothing changes. This is at the root of why Britain feels so stuck and why disillusionment with politics runs so deep.
The solution is not glamorous, and it will not grab easy headlines, but it is essential. Reforming the way the state operates is the precondition for any serious programme of government. That reform must mean combining quangos where they duplicate each other, slimming them down where they are bloated, and in many cases outright abolition and defunding. It is only by shrinking and streamlining decision-making that governments can hope to deliver real change.
Until that reform is undertaken, it doesn’t matter who Starmer or indeed any future prime minister puts in his or her cabinet. The real government of Britain is elsewhere, buried deep in a sprawling, bloated and unaccountable quango state. And until that shadow government is confronted head on by our politicians no reshuffle, no manifesto pledge and no grand plan for change will matter.
