The System IS the Problem: Why No One in UK Politics Today Can Escape It

The room for manoeuvre has gone

There are political moments when the noise briefly clears and the real problem underneath becomes visible. This is one of them. Not the daily drama, not the personalities, not the tactical argument of the week, but the deeper truth:

UK politics is now operating inside constraints so tight that real deviation risks bringing the whole structure down.

The issue is no longer simply that governments disappoint people. It is that government itself has increasingly nowhere to go. There is too little fiscal space, too little executive capacity, too little institutional resilience, and too much fragility built into almost everything the state now touches.

That is why the current political situation matters so much. The promises still sound large. The rhetoric still suggests choice. The next election still appears to offer a reset. But the system any government would inherit is already so tightly wound that the space between promise and reality has almost disappeared.

This is not just a story about Labour, the Conservatives, Reform, or any other party waiting for its turn. It is a story about a system that has exhausted the productive base, social resilience and institutional slack it once relied on, while still pretending politics can carry on as if those foundations remain intact.

The present moment is not a reset

The danger is that we keep reading each new political moment as a fresh beginning: a new leader, a new party, a new slogan, a new set of promises. But the deeper pattern is now harder to avoid. Each actor enters the same machinery, meets the same limits, and is then judged as if those limits were personal or partisan failures.

That is why recent honesty from inside Labour matters. Not because it reveals something uniquely damaging about Labour, but because it says out loud what every recent government has encountered, and what every future government will encounter unless the system itself is confronted.

The system is now the constraint

There was a time when governments could survive their own contradictions because the country still had enough spare capacity to absorb them. There was enough productive depth, enough institutional memory, enough social resilience, and enough fiscal room to muddle through.

That space has gone.

What remains is a money-centric, extractive system that has treated real productivity as something to be consumed rather than renewed. It has hollowed out capacity, captured too much of what once created value, and left the state managing consequences it no longer has the strength to resolve.

That is why the problem now feels different. It is not just that politicians face difficult choices. It is that almost every serious choice now carries a chain reaction.

Cut spending too hard, and social stability breaks.

Raise taxes too far, and the remaining productive base strains.

Borrow too much, and market confidence becomes a constraint.

Reform too quickly, and overloaded institutions fracture.

Every lever is now attached to something else. Every promise is surrounded by consequences. Every attempt to move decisively risks exposing how little room remains.

This is what politicians discover as they get closer to power. From the outside, politics still looks like choice. From the inside, it looks increasingly like constraint management.

That is the truth the public is not being told clearly enough.

The politician’s dilemma

This leaves every ambitious politician with the same dilemma.

To reach power, they must still sound as though change is available on familiar terms. They must offer energy, direction, confidence and action. They must persuade voters that the next government can do what the last government failed to do, even as the system they hope to inherit is leaving less and less space for any of it.

That is why policy language often becomes slippery at this stage of the cycle. It sounds like change to the untrained ear, but often reflects the reality facing a politician close enough to power to see the limits clearly: announcements narrow, promises become conditional, radicalism becomes sequencing, and transformation becomes delivery reform.

Burnham’s recent positioning matters in that context. The precise policies are less important than the direction of travel. The language still needs to sound active and ambitious, but it is increasingly shaped by the reality that awaits anyone who gets the keys to Number 10, or gets close enough to understand what those keys actually mean: no money without consequences, no reform without resistance, no easy cut that does not land somewhere human, and no decisive move that does not set off movement elsewhere.

That reality has faced successive governments. It is now facing this one. It will face the next one too. The pattern is brutally simple: they arrive promising movement, meet the constraint, narrow the promise, and are judged as if the constraint did not exist.

Only now, the cycle is compressing.

The honesty people are likely to misread

When Matt Chorley shared Chris Ward’s remarks on BBC 5 Live, the thread was instantly read as a comment on Labour’s internal challenges. The emojis, the shorthand – “no money, no time, tricky party” – made it sound like a partisan critique.

But the full exchange pointed to something bigger: a rare, candid description of the structural limits of government itself.

Ward wasn’t talking about Labour’s competence.

He was describing the physics now facing anyone who governs.

“There’s no money. It’s not that a new government suddenly invents a way through that – that is a massive challenge…

Secondly, there’s no time… Getting anything over the line is so difficult and so time‑consuming…

And the third big challenge is unity – that’s not a moment that lasts for long.”

Most people will hear that and think:

“Labour are struggling.”

But what he’s actually describing is the reality any government now faces.

The Conservatives hit the same wall – they just pretend they didn’t.

Labour are hitting it now.

Reform will hit it next.

The way the quote circulated online – stripped of context and reduced to emojis – is part of the problem. We keep mistaking structural reality for partisan failure. We keep reading honesty as weakness. We keep treating each turn of the wheel as a new story, when it is often the same system taking different actors back to the same place. And we keep missing the bigger message hiding in plain sight: the system itself is leaving government with nowhere to go.

That is what is killing what remains of our politics.

Why the next election may not resolve anything

There is a real chance that the current government is forced back to the country sooner than expected, or at least begins that process before the year is out. But even if that happens, it will not change the underlying reality.

Another election may change the personnel. It may change the mood. It may produce a different parliamentary arithmetic. It may even bring a Reform-led government, with or without a majority.

But it will not create room that does not exist.

The hardest truth is that no party can spend what the system no longer generates, cut what society now depends on without consequence, or restructure the state at speed without triggering effects elsewhere.

This is where much of the current rhetoric becomes dangerous. Bold plans appeal because they name real frustrations. But naming the frustration is not the same as creating capacity.

Large-scale fiscal shifts, rapid cuts, aggressive restructuring or dramatic executive action all assume that the system still has shock absorbers. It does not.

That is why another election could easily be followed by another crisis of legitimacy. A new government may arrive claiming a mandate to break the pattern, only to discover that the mandate does not change the machinery.

If the gap between promise and delivery opens quickly enough, the country could find itself back at the ballot box far sooner than anyone expects.

Why PR would not be the answer either

At that point, pressure for proportional representation may become overwhelming. That would be understandable. If people feel the system has failed repeatedly, they will look for a deeper democratic reset.

But PR would not answer the deepest problem.

It may improve representation, make Parliament feel more plural, and break the old duopoly completely. But it would not rebuild state capacity, restore productivity, create fiscal headroom, make overloaded services resilient, or reverse decades of extraction from the real economy.

PR changes how political power is distributed. It does not change the fact that the state is trying to do too much with too little, that too many people rely on systems already close to failure, or that the economic base beneath government has been weakened.

It would change the seating plan. It would not fix the building.

Why Reform would meet the same wall

Reform matters here because it may become the next major test of the illusion that political will is enough.

Its appeal is not mysterious. It speaks to people who feel ignored, overtaxed, under protected and patronised by a political class that has repeatedly failed to deliver.

Much of that frustration is real, and Reform offers urgency, clarity, punishment of the old order, and the feeling that someone might finally do something.

But urgency is not capacity.

Clarity is not room to manoeuvre.

A mandate, however large, cannot repeal the consequences of a system that has become too brittle to absorb shock.

Slashing benefits may sound attractive to people who do not currently need them. But benefits are not just a moral or fiscal question. In the country we have actually built, they are also holding back pressures created by wages that no longer allow many people to live independently, housing costs that absorb too much income, and services already stretched beyond design.

Pull that support away too quickly and the result is not simply savings. It is homelessness, crisis demand, public health pressure, social disorder, family breakdown, and costs reappearing elsewhere in the system.

That is what happens when the minimum wage is not enough for independent life, essentials become extraction points, and the state is left subsidising the consequences of an economy that no longer provides secure ground beneath people.

Reform would not escape that. No party would.

The deeper economic failure

This is why even the language of rescue now feels misleading. In the 1970s, an IMF intervention could still be understood against a country with a different productive structure beneath it. There were still industrial capacities, business forms, social expectations and economic relationships that could be reorganised around recovery.

Today, too much has been financialised, outsourced, consolidated and captured by systems that extract value rather than renew it.

That does not mean recovery is impossible.

It means recovery cannot be delivered by pretending the old tools still work in the old way.

The country has not simply run out of money. It has run out of the productive and institutional slack that once made political promises survivable.

That is the deeper reason government now has nowhere to go. It cannot easily tax, borrow, cut, spend, reform or delay without making another part of the system worse.

The global thread is even thinner

And all of this is before we even widen the lens.

The domestic system is already stretched thin. But it is not operating in a vacuum. It is exposed to energy shocks, market shocks, geopolitical escalation, supply-chain disruption, climate impacts, migration pressures, technological upheaval and the instability of a global order that itself looks increasingly brittle.

Any one of those could snap the thread.

That is why the political debate feels so unreal.

We are still arguing as if the question is which team can manage the old model better.

But the old model is the thing now failing.

Where this leaves us

If there is a thread running through all of this, it is that we keep mistaking political rotation for political escape. We change the faces, the slogans and the electoral maths, while leaving the underlying system untouched.

But the system is no longer merely inefficient. It is closing in.

That is why no one in UK politics today can escape it. Not because they lack ambition, slogans, advisers, strategies, reforms or mandates, but because the space those things require no longer exists in the way we pretend it does.

Another election may accelerate the reckoning. A Reform government may expose it. A push for PR may follow it. A fiscal crisis may sharpen it. A global shock may detonate it.

But none of those things, by themselves, fix the underlying problem, because none of them rebuild the productive, institutional and social capacity the system has consumed.

The system is not simply failing to deliver the future politicians keep promising. It is consuming the capacity that would be needed to build one.

Until that is faced, every election will feel like change, every government will promise movement, and every cycle will tighten – not because we chose the wrong people, but because we never changed the system they were stepping into.

The Contemporary Politicians Dilemma

We Can’t Fix Society Because We Won’t Question Money

Borrowing into Oblivion – How Britain was hollowed out, why so few saw it, and what comes next

When the System Runs Out of Road | Britain’s benefits crisis, the defence dilemma, and the limits of an economy built on low wages and public subsidy.

What Happened to Britain: The Slow Drift No One Noticed

Proportional Representation: The wrong answer to the right frustrations | And why it risks deepening the crisis its champions claim it will solve

End of the ‘Duopoly’ – or the Slow Death of the Entire UK Political System?

The System IS The Problem PDF_Vers1_26Jun26 Download

End of the ‘Duopoly’ – or the Slow Death of the Entire UK Political System?

Public narratives have increasingly been used to shape how we interpret major events – often subtly, often through fear, and often in ways that encourage us to accept outcomes that might never have emerged if we had been left to form our own conclusions.

Whether it’s the breathless insistence that an AI takeover is inevitable or the framing of political change as something predetermined, narratives have become tools for steering public belief long before reality has settled.

Sometimes these narratives are deliberately crafted. Other times, even those repeating them may not fully understand the consequences of the stories they help spread.

Either way, the effect is the same: they shape how we see the world during a period that is already turbulent and uncertain.

The New Post‑Election Narrative: “The End of the Duopoly”

In the hours following the 2026 UK local election results, a striking uniformity appeared across political commentary. The phrase “end of the duopoly” – referring to the supposed collapse of Labour–Conservative dominance – began appearing everywhere at once.

Even early on Saturday 9 May, with all results declared, the framing had already solidified: the UK is entering a new era of multi‑party politics, with Reform UK positioned as the emerging force.

But what does this narrative actually mean? And more importantly – what does it leave out?

Contextualising the Claim

The UK has never been a strict two‑party system, but the electoral mechanics of First Past the Post have historically produced two dominant blocs.

The new narrative suggests:

Labour and the Conservatives are losing their structural dominance.
Reform UK is becoming the largest force in a fragmented landscape.
A European‑style multi‑party system is emerging.

Specialist pollsters have already produced “like‑for‑like” general‑election projections based on the local‑election vote shares.

These projections – while not predictions – suggest that Reform could become the largest party but still fall short of a majority, requiring cooperation with the Conservatives to govern.

This would conveniently provide an explanation for any undelivered promises: coalition constraints, market pressures, or the need for “stability”.

A Straightforward Interpretation – But an Incomplete One

Yes, the Greens also performed strongly, though not at the levels some earlier polling suggested. Yes, the Conservatives and Labour both suffered significant losses. And yes, this could be read as the new normal for British politics.

But the deeper question is whether this is truly a political realignment – or simply the next step in a much longer, more fundamental breakdown.

The Systemic Problem Beneath the Party Shifts

Most people see politics only at the surface level: parties, personalities, and promises.

But the problems facing the UK today are not primarily the result of individual politicians or even individual parties.

They are the consequences of a system that has been allowed to drift into dysfunction.

The UK’s political‑economic model – neoliberal, globalised, market‑centric, and dependent on fiat‑money expansion – has:

extracted productivity and resilience from the economy
created a bloated but underperforming public sector
generated unsustainable levels of public and private debt
masked deepening poverty through an ever‑expanding benefits system
reduced political leadership to managerialism rather than representation

The expected to be outgoing Prime Minister may be an extreme example of the political class at its worst, but he is not an outlier. His behaviour, motivations, and priorities are symptoms of a political culture that has lost its connection to public service.

Different parties may sound different, but they operate within – and are shaped by – the same system.

Their incentives, constraints, and worldview are aligned far more closely than their rhetoric suggests.

Is This Really a “Shift” – or the Last Gasp of a Failing Model?

What is unfolding may not be a realignment at all. It may be the final attempt by political actors to fix systemic problems using the same tools, rules, and assumptions that created those problems in the first place.

Reform UK could, in theory, be a vehicle for genuine change. But the evidence so far suggests they may simply continue the trajectory set by Labour and the Conservatives – not necessarily because they lack intent, but because once confronted with the realities of governing within the existing system, they will face the same constraints.

The brief premiership of Liz Truss is a cautionary tale: the system can eject a government faster than voters can.

The Bigger Picture

The real seismic shift may not be the 2026 local elections or even the next general election. It may be the slow, grinding collapse of a political‑economic system that no longer works – and the emergence of something new that none of the current political class is prepared for.

The “end of the duopoly” may be less a new beginning and more a sign that the old system is running out of road.

End of the Duopoly or Slow Death PDF_Vers1_9May26 Download

Plastic Productivity and the Debt Trap: What the November Budget Won’t Fix

Governments do not collapse in the same way that individuals or businesses do. If they did, the United Kingdom would have gone under financially long ago. Instead, the state continues to function by rolling debt forward, reshaping obligations, and presenting the appearance of stability. For ordinary people, however, the rules are very different. When we cannot meet our commitments, we fail – unless someone steps in to bail us out.

Meeting financial obligations requires honesty. You must know whether you can truly pay your debts or whether survival depends on wishful thinking. Throughout history, people and businesses have thrived or failed for both good and bad reasons. As long as they appear to function, few question what lies beneath.

For tradesmen, small business owners, and entrepreneurs, the reality is harsh. None of us are “too big to fail.” Once obligations can no longer be met, collapse follows unless a benefactor intervenes.

We like to believe the same standards apply to everyone, whether sweeping streets or running government. Yet elites have always bent rules to their advantage. They forget that all people, high or low, share the same human experience. Power corrupts, and politicians often forget they were elected simply to fill a seat, not because they are uniquely qualified to decide what is best for everyone.

The shift to fiat money in 1971 changed everything. It allowed governments, banks, and corporations to manipulate the system, creating the illusion of endless funds. Behind closed doors, decisions were shaped by business and banking interests, while politicians no longer had to worry about the true responsibilities of leadership.

Debt became hidden behind GDP figures. Growth and transaction volumes disguised the reality of an exploding debt pile. To the untrained eye, it looked as though debt was shrinking, when in fact it was spiralling out of control.

This illusion was sustained by what might be called “plastic productivity.”* Assets and infrastructure were bought cheaply, production was outsourced overseas, and consumers were encouraged to buy more and more goods they didn’t need. People became indebted to the same banks that lent to government, yet could just about service their loans. It seemed as though prosperity was endless, and few questioned the narrative.

But the system was never sustainable. Its architects knew it would transfer wealth and ownership to a small elite. By making money and material wealth addictive, they ensured control. With industries hollowed out, productivity now depends almost entirely on expanding debt – by government, business, and individuals alike.

Politicians face a broken system. To keep the machinery of government running, they must tax normal people more heavily. Yet much of public spending delivers little benefit. Policies have been rewritten, words twisted, and meanings changed to allow politicians to cling to power while the wealthy grow richer. Assets of real value have been transferred to people who could never have owned them otherwise.

If the system collapses, the establishment will impose new rules. They may impoverish citizens further, leaving people no choice but to accept whatever is dictated. Many politicians may not even understand the system they oversee. They follow instructions blindly, blamed for decisions that are not theirs, lacking the skills to lead differently.

The situation could drag on for months or years. Collapse may come when the public finally says “enough,” or when the establishment has drained the country dry. Even if a new government is elected – Reform UK, Nigel Farage, or anyone else – they will face the same reality. Cutting spending or taxes cannot fix a nation that is broke and owns nothing. Wealth has already been transferred to lenders.

The system is broken. We must either accept subjugation under a corrupt structure built on trickery, or take a leap of faith and start again from scratch.

***

*”Plastic productivity” refers to the illusion of economic growth created by outsourcing production, encouraging over‑consumption, and sustaining debt, rather than building genuine, sustainable value. It’s not about plastics as a material, but about a system that mimics productivity while hollowing out real industries and transferring wealth.

https://adamtugwell.blog/2025/03/24/how-the-uk-was-led-into-the-fiscal-driven-armageddon-we-are-now-within/

https://adamtugwell.blog/2024/12/06/the-harmful-truths-that-are-hidden-behind-political-growth/

The Local Economy & Governance System | Online Text

Plastic Productivity and The Debt Trap PDF_Vers1_ 21Nov25 Download

Our Communities are the only place that a workable political solution can begin

Any Political Solution to the crisis we are in must develop and grow from our communities and grassroots; NOT from any existing Party that still wants to rule everyone Top-Down

One of the key problems with UK Politics today is that it operates as almost the mirror image of wider culture, where most people fall into the trap of believing that their own perspective is the right one. But that anyone with an alternative view of any kind – even in just the smallest of ways, is or will be fundamentally wrong about everything else, too.

Yes, you could easily argue that this is how tribes and groups work.

But politics or rather the UK political system is supposed to be about delivering public policy that is created and then implemented in the best interests of ALL British People.

The one thing that we can be sure of is that when it comes to the political classes who have been running Westminster and our local Councils for decades, there is very little about any of it – apart from the Election campaigns, that has anything to do with or what is best for us.

As I have been discussing in some of my recent blogs, time has now run out for the way that government and our economic system runs. Neoliberalism and everything such as MMT, FIAT money, and the increasingly illogically impractical schemes like Net Zero and everything that pushes people and businesses into being reliant on credit are no longer sustainable.

That is why everything is now in the process of crashing around the Labour Government’s head.

Yes, the politicians in power are incompetent.

No, the mess we are in didn’t begin the day after Labour were elected to power and Starmer arrived in No.10.

And No, not Labour, nor the Tories, the Liberal Democrats, Reform or any other group of politicians currently looking ahead to the next General Election are going to offer and deliver to us anything different. Certainly not in any way that the UK actually needs.

For a time, I was open to the idea that Reform could find itself pursuing a different way. One that would offer the cross-tribal consensus and answers that the UK now needs.

Instead, it has become clear that the mechanics of this 4^th evolution of the anti-EU movement certainly hasn’t moved on in any kind of people-centric direction.

Instead, Reform is just reforming itself, but in ways that have a very familiar likeness to political parties that have been in power before, who have increasingly aligned themselves and been led by the machinations of the establishment instead.

The mess over Rupert Lowe and the inescapable optics suggesting that at every level of the Reform Party, the whole thing is all about Nigel Farage, really does speak volumes for itself.

That’s before taking the time to read the outpourings of words from former party activists and ‘officers’ who have recently walked away. Just like better known voices associated with Reform such as those of Howard Cox and Ben Habib.

If any of the names instantly trigger feelings that suggest you have taken a side as you read – no matter the reason, it is exactly that kind of emotion that is our collective problem.

Disagreement over the smallest of things shuts so many of us down to the reality that we all have views about different things that we might never agree on. But when it comes down to all the things that are actually important, there is an awful lot of commonalities between all of us to be found.

Difficult to hear though it might be, it is the division that is deliberately sown between us over issues that we do have in common – by them being presented in ways that make them appear and trigger us as if they are something else – that really plays into the hands of the incompetent political classes that we regrettably have.

As things stand, and without a lot of us choosing to approach our relationship with politics very differently, the same people dividing us and guiding us to hate people we should not have any hate for, are set to keep guiding the ship that we are all beginning to sink on. And they will happily continue to do so, until the whole thing actually goes down.

Westminster is just the tip of the ruling iceberg that we can actually see.

Behind central government sits all the things like power, influence and the wealth accumulation that money controls and which is carefully kept outside of open view.

Because the truth is that the only people who benefit from us continuing to elect politicians who are under the spell of the establishment are those politicians and all those who are benefiting from the continuation of the establishment itself.

Whilst there is very good reason to believe that the wheels could fall off this broken bus at any moment in time, for those who have been aware and watching the direction of travel of the UK (and for that matter the whole of the Western world) for a considerable period of time, both the Global Financial Crisis and then the responses to the Covid Pandemic could, and arguably should, have already been the catalysts that introduced a genuinely new way of doing governance to the UK.

That these two massive events didn’t doesn’t indicate that change cannot or will not come.

The fact that we have been led to believe that what the politicians have done in response is in any way normal just tells us even more about how deeply embedded those who genuinely believe or work with this Top-Down, them vs us culture really are, right across the establishment.

We can see just how far they are prepared to take things in their attempts to stop the whole thing from crashing down, even now. Indeed, they are growing so desperate to maintain The System, they are even attacking the people who their ‘tribe’ have always typically helped.

Whilst the talk of absolutes will certainly sound like a contradiction to the words used as I began writing this Blog above, the one dividing line that we really do have no choice but to observe and then decide upon, is which side we sit between the establishment and all it stands for, and on the other side, the people and what putting people, our communities and the environment surrounding the places where we live and work, first.

Whilst even the Tories are successfully making themselves sound very plausible, just 8 months on from losing power, in the context of everything that the Labour Government is doing wrong, none of these political parties – and that almost certainly now includes Reform, show any sign of genuinely offering an alternative to establishment-directed public policy today.

However, it isn’t today and what is now past that we need to worry about. The most important thing is the future, and specifically what happens when we reach the next General Election and what must be ‘our time’.

The UK and we as its people cannot afford another General Election result that delivers power to any group – whether elected directly, or assembled as a result of some kind of post-election ‘deal’, that then goes on to do whatever the hell it likes.

No political party out there today, currently canvassing for votes in this years Local Elections is offering to do anything in any different kind of way.

We know this, because the way that they are running their election campaigns right now; how they are communicating and most importantly, how they are engaging with real people outside the bubbles of their own members and activists, is exactly the same as it has always been before.

To put it bluntly, we can no longer afford to take the risk that comes with accepting a choice of political candidates in any election, that not us, but the political parties themselves actually choose.

Change will not come in the way that we now so desperately need it, if we keep on doing politics at every level in the UK in exactly the same way!

It is our communities and the people who are around us every day who should be selecting the people who will represent us at all levels of government.

Not people we don’t know beyond the pictures, websites, social media and TV screens.

We need public representatives to represent us who have genuine skin in our game. People who are answerable only to us and who are committed to delivering locality-centric democracy, that is the only way that democracy can genuinely thrive, survive and most importantly, work.

Whilst government and the public sector really do now need to undergo massive change, the reality is that our communities could be working together to select and elect non-party candidates in all elections, right now.

We certainly don’t need any kind of change to the electoral system that just favours the election of more incompetent candidates. Ambitious and self-serving politicians whose actions will be made even worse by the guaranteed requirement for compromise on public policy that schemes like Proportional Representation as a replacement for First Past the Post would bring.

Power MUST come back to the people. Not through carefully crafted labels like ‘devolution’ and ‘devolved power’ that is nothing more than Regional Centralisation sold to us with a very misleading name.

The power – OUR POWER is already ours and that power can be made to work for us right now. IF we choose to use it. Look beyond the manufactured differences. And focus on working together, on the important things that we all have in common, and to deliver a new world and way of being that is happy, healthy, safe, secure and governs life with fairness, balance and justice for us all.

Anyone can begin this process of change and the appointment of new candidates to become the public representatives and politicians who will create and deliver our new future, right now. And we need them to, IF we are going to experience beneficial change.

That change will only be certain if we all change the way that we think. What we can be sure of, however, is that a good future for us all doesn’t and will not start where anything ‘new’ for the politicians and voices that we already recognise as public figures begins.

A Community Route | Full Text

The Grassroots Manifesto | Full Text

Officially NONE OF THE ABOVE | Full Text

Where the political solution MUST begin PDF_Vers1_25Mar25 Download

No, the UK doesn’t need DOGE. We need an entirely different approach to restoring Public Service provision

Depending upon which side of the fashionable side of the divide you currently sit on, you could be looking in horror at the work and changes that Elon Musk has already made to US Federal or government spending structures.

Alternatively, and as many on the right of the UKs political spectrum currently are, you might be so enthralled by how the sweeping changes of the new Trump administration looks, that you are already championing a similar approach for the UKs Public Sector, just as soon as the next government has been installed.

That wastage, the pursuit of projects that should never have been pursued, and the existence of many public servants who have never once served the best interests of the public at all is a problem across government, public services, NGOs and anywhere that the public purse picks up the bill across the UK, is most certainly true.

However, to suggest that ‘the problem’ would be solved, merely by taking an arbitrary glance at what money has and is being spent on, then stopping the cheques without question where anything doesn’t resonate, is utterly foolish.

Expecting some unseen force to pick up the slack from any action that could shut down public service provision overnight, is the food upon which anarchy and civil unrest are built on.

Those seriously minded about finding the solutions to the mess that the UK is now in would do well to remember that sharing a language and words that we use with our American cousins is in many respects where the real similarities between the way that we are governed and how our very different countries are run simply ends.

Whilst many of us fall into the trap at election time of believing that we are voting for one Prime Minister or another, the UK doesn’t have a Presidential system like the United States.

Even though it can be interpreted as being exactly that way, when one minute Rishi Sunak goes and is replaced just an hour later by Keir Starmer in No.10.

The sweeping powers that the American President appears to have just don’t manifest in the UK in anything like the same way – even if that’s how they genuinely work in the USA.

A mistake that we can be reasonably confident that most of the Prime Ministers over the past 3 decades are likely to have made would be that they have headed from The Palace to No.10, with the belief that once the famous door closes behind them, it will be as simple as saying whatever they want to say, and that whatever they then goes’.

No decision can be made in any form of government without consequences – as many of us like our Farmers are now openly in the process of finding out.

Yet many would be amazed at how simple many of the politicians that we have today really believe that making reasoned and meaningful change in and across government really is.

To say that the public sector is a monster of our politicians’ own making would be an understatement of seismic proportions.

But to begin to understand what anyone who really wants to ‘fix’ anything is up against, it is essential to recognise that the public sector is little more than a patchwork of massive, money-burning fiefdoms, where nothing more than overarching ‘policy’ direction is set and paid for by central government (That’s the Westminster lot).

Every little thing that can be interpreted and managed in some way differently, will be. To suit the needs of an overwhelmingly protectionist sector that has truly forgotten what it was created for.

Decisions overtly made by public representatives are followed and implemented in ways that would only ever be recognised as being corrupt if and when it could be proven that the decisions made were directly paid for.

If the reader can appreciate this, it is also just as important to understand that very little of anything the public sector does is technically or legally wrong. Because the system, the rules, the regulations and the directions that they are given have evolved over decades of time so that all of these organisations can apparently be run in any way that those managing them choose, as long as it appears that they are doing what they have been told.

The reason that the public sector serves itself isn’t because the Councillors, Mayors, Boards, CEOs and Executives have all decided that they will go it alone.

It’s because the UK has been a rudderless ship when it comes to leadership at the very top of government for so long that the system is now one that it is almost impossible for anyone at the very top to lead.

The UKs public sector and system of government delivery has become far too centralised and hierarchical for the distance between decision maker and decision implementor to work efficiently and work in the best interests of all those who genuinely need it in any way.

No, it’s not as simple as placing someone at the head of government who means what they say. Even though there are many existing and would-be politicians who are desperate for us all to see it that way.

Besides the fact that the UKs ‘executive’ really should always understand what they are doing, the technical structure of government and service delivery it ‘leads’ also needs to be of a size and nature where decision making is genuinely in touch with reality.

Public delivery systems need to respond and feedback in ways that are not only seen as being effective, but actually do work.

If you are minded that it’s the delivery that is the most important thing when it comes to Public Service provision, you may also be able to see that it’s the way that our government is structured, that is and has led to the problems that we now have, right from the very start.

Centralisation of power has created circumstances where poor politicians can hide the poor decisions that they make. Because the chain of authority is simply too big for whoever is genuinely responsible for the damage that is caused by ineptitude to take the blame.

Lack of real accountability is a problem throughout the public sector as a direct result. And when public servants look for an example to follow, many see what today’s politicians are doing, rather than what they are saying they are doing, and then interpret that model of behaviour as being perfectly acceptable to define how they approach their own workload.

So, whilst the talk coming from Reform, what is left of the Tories and what we identify currently as the ‘right’ may be suggesting that they all intend taking an axe to all that’s wrong with the UKs public sector, the hard truth that sits behind the veil of electioneering rhetoric is the problems we face are much more severe and structurally embedded than anyone is currently prepared to publicly admit.

Knee-jerk cost reducing strategies enacted in isolation will end up hurting people, if not actually leading to chaos. And as public policy solutions go, a DOGE for the UK will not really take anyone wishing to be successful in government all that far at all.

The correct solutions for everyone are not always obvious. But fools with power will inevitably believe that they are.

The problem also isn’t a new one. It’s just that it is becoming clearer to normal people today in ways that it never has done before.

The system works as it does, because it benefits certain interests for it to do so. People have always missed out. But the number has steadily increased to the level where the problems caused can be seen today. Because every lie has to be hidden by many others, until no lie can hide the others anymore.

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I first saw these issues over 25 years ago running charity-based services that were funded by public sector partners and then as a local government officer where I designed and set up a service to benefit not-for-profit organisations. I quickly realised that the system at that time was likely to have been four times as productive with a quarter of the people, if it wasn’t protectionist in every conceivable sense and encouraged public servants to serve the public rather than the organisations themselves.

Twelve years as a Councillor with four as a Licensing Chair served to develop my view and understanding much further and I have previously written in detail about the problem and will link those blogs below.

Jail terms for public servants who overlook their safeguarding responsibilities sounds tough. But if the cause of the problem is actually government wide, should David Cameron be volunteering himself for 5 years in prison rather than another jolly in No. 10?

Public outcry over Grenfell may ensure prosecutions, but the root causes of public sector indifference are cultural and injustices are destined to continue