The Prime Minister’s personal failings are well known and widely reported. More worryingly they tend to obscure the urgent need to overhaul our unelected state which is more powerful and less responsive than ever.
Wresting control from ‘The Blob’ is the central challenge of our times according to Allister Heath in the Telegraph (24.11.21) which the government promised to deliver in its election manifesto by cutting tax and cutting red tape.
“Instead, taxes are shooting up; the economy is stagnating, with no plan to eliminate any of the unnecessary regulations weighing it down; the cost of living is surging; a devastating energy crisis is nigh; and the NHS, having seen off the existential threat to its obsolete model posed by the brilliantly successful Vaccine Taskforce, has reverted to bureaucratic type, sucking in billions while failing patients on a scandalous scale. Most damningly of all, the Government appears to have no plan to tackle any of this.
The Blob thrives in a vacuum: No 10 has lost its grip, and many ministers are too weak, seeing themselves as the representatives of their department rather than of the people. The elected, Tory Government isn’t really in control of the machinery of state, the civil servants and quangos. The Prime Minister no longer seems to have the appetite, or the right advisers, to fight the war of attrition against the Blob that saw him through the heady days of his minority government and the first few months after the general election.”
By contrast:
“The Blob is self-entitled: it believes it has the right to govern itself. It believes that it knows best, that it is the permanent government, that politicians are interlopers and that democracy needs to be carefully controlled.”
And therein lies the principal political battle of our times: between the elected and unelected state.
The full article can be read here with a link the original beneath it:
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