Alex Thomas is a programme director at the Institute for Government and a former senior civil servant.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language, according to Ronald Reagan, are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help”. How much more frightening it must be, then, for a prime minister looking to shake things up to have to do battle with the deep state at the very heart of government.
So why is it that, with one brief but notable exception, prime ministers have tended to warm to these forces of darkness? And why have successive governments from the left and the right deliberately created more supposed constraints and bureaucracy – the OBR, FSA, EHRC, EA, DVLA, Of-com/sted/qual/wat – rather than less?
Sometimes the answer is to fill a real or perceived gap, often as a response to a scandal or crisis, or to do something more efficiently.
But just as often it is to give governments space and cover to pursue their political projects. Anxiety about the deep state, of shadowy institutions working to thwart elected politicians’ noble aims, misses the point that the deep state is there to help ministers achieve their objectives.
Take the Office for Budget Responsibility. George Osborne founded the OBR at least in part to give him cover for austerity. Having an independent body watching over the nation’s finances was part of the project, and gave him the political space to shrink the state.
Imagine if, in the autumn of 2022, Liz Truss and Kwai Kwarteng had hugged the OBR close. Welcomed its forecasts showing the troublesome state of the public finances, and co-opted the Treasury, the Bank of England, and its agencies to their aims, in so doing presenting tax and spending cuts as a coherent package.
Things would still have been rocky, but Truss’s government would have lasted longer, with a better shot at pulling off its core objective. (Whether that would have been a good thing or not is another question.)
What about that other shadowy organ of the deep state, the Cabinet Office, with the cabinet secretary at its heart? The man who always used to be called “the most powerful person you’ve never heard of’” until partygate, and Boris Johnson, meant that all too many people had heard of Simon Case.
One of the cabinet secretary’s jobs has been to investigate alleged wrongdoing in government, recently (usually) alongside an appointed ethics adviser. The deep-state sceptics start to twitch. Why should a minister’s career be handed over to a functionary? What right does a civil servant have to stand in judgment over an elected politician?
The answer, like with the creation of the OBR, is because it works for the prime minister. No leader wants to be personally responsible for sacking a colleague over an ethics violation. Far easier to punt off the problem to someone else to investigate and then to blame for the consequences.
I acknowledge some personal bias here. I was a civil servant, at one time working for the biggest bogey-man and woman of the deep state: Jeremy Heywood, then cabinet secretary, and Sue Gray, then ethics adviser. Heywood was, apparently, “the die-hard Remainer who really runs Britain” who, as “Sir Cover-up”, was more powerful than the prime minister.
But four prime ministers found Heywood (and Gray) indispensable. That was because they made the system work on the prime minister’s behalf. Some have argued they did so too well; that “Heywood was the prime minister’s man” rather than a representative of the whole civil service.
But for good or ill, being the prime minister’s man (or one day perhaps woman) has become the job of the cabinet secretary. Not a deep state resister, but a government facilitator.
Which is why the criticisms of senior officials being obstructive and resistant are so wide of the mark. The Civil Service has lost its confidence over the last decade. It needs reform to build up its expertise and better implement government priorities. But that is a question of capability, not intent.
Government is not easy. Ministers need all the help they can get. To develop a programme for change that works, to translate it into plans, milestones and organisational structures, and to work out when and how to co-opt those useful institutions – that is what the Civil Service is there to do.
Getting things done is not just about winning a battle of ideas, it is about marrying ideas for change with mechanisms to deliver that agenda.
We know that can happen. Both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair set direction and implemented change. They knew that winning an election was not enough, and that they needed to excel at the craft and graft of governing. Both, not coincidentally, brought on civil servants who knew how to help them do it.
There’s a lesson there. The deep state really is here to help. If only Truss, as prime minister, had known it.
Alex Thomas is a programme director at the Institute for Government and a former senior civil servant.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language, according to Ronald Reagan, are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help”. How much more frightening it must be, then, for a prime minister looking to shake things up to have to do battle with the deep state at the very heart of government.
So why is it that, with one brief but notable exception, prime ministers have tended to warm to these forces of darkness? And why have successive governments from the left and the right deliberately created more supposed constraints and bureaucracy – the OBR, FSA, EHRC, EA, DVLA, Of-com/sted/qual/wat – rather than less?
Sometimes the answer is to fill a real or perceived gap, often as a response to a scandal or crisis, or to do something more efficiently.
But just as often it is to give governments space and cover to pursue their political projects. Anxiety about the deep state, of shadowy institutions working to thwart elected politicians’ noble aims, misses the point that the deep state is there to help ministers achieve their objectives.
Take the Office for Budget Responsibility. George Osborne founded the OBR at least in part to give him cover for austerity. Having an independent body watching over the nation’s finances was part of the project, and gave him the political space to shrink the state.
Imagine if, in the autumn of 2022, Liz Truss and Kwai Kwarteng had hugged the OBR close. Welcomed its forecasts showing the troublesome state of the public finances, and co-opted the Treasury, the Bank of England, and its agencies to their aims, in so doing presenting tax and spending cuts as a coherent package.
Things would still have been rocky, but Truss’s government would have lasted longer, with a better shot at pulling off its core objective. (Whether that would have been a good thing or not is another question.)
What about that other shadowy organ of the deep state, the Cabinet Office, with the cabinet secretary at its heart? The man who always used to be called “the most powerful person you’ve never heard of’” until partygate, and Boris Johnson, meant that all too many people had heard of Simon Case.
One of the cabinet secretary’s jobs has been to investigate alleged wrongdoing in government, recently (usually) alongside an appointed ethics adviser. The deep-state sceptics start to twitch. Why should a minister’s career be handed over to a functionary? What right does a civil servant have to stand in judgment over an elected politician?
The answer, like with the creation of the OBR, is because it works for the prime minister. No leader wants to be personally responsible for sacking a colleague over an ethics violation. Far easier to punt off the problem to someone else to investigate and then to blame for the consequences.
I acknowledge some personal bias here. I was a civil servant, at one time working for the biggest bogey-man and woman of the deep state: Jeremy Heywood, then cabinet secretary, and Sue Gray, then ethics adviser. Heywood was, apparently, “the die-hard Remainer who really runs Britain” who, as “Sir Cover-up”, was more powerful than the prime minister.
But four prime ministers found Heywood (and Gray) indispensable. That was because they made the system work on the prime minister’s behalf. Some have argued they did so too well; that “Heywood was the prime minister’s man” rather than a representative of the whole civil service.
But for good or ill, being the prime minister’s man (or one day perhaps woman) has become the job of the cabinet secretary. Not a deep state resister, but a government facilitator.
Which is why the criticisms of senior officials being obstructive and resistant are so wide of the mark. The Civil Service has lost its confidence over the last decade. It needs reform to build up its expertise and better implement government priorities. But that is a question of capability, not intent.
Government is not easy. Ministers need all the help they can get. To develop a programme for change that works, to translate it into plans, milestones and organisational structures, and to work out when and how to co-opt those useful institutions – that is what the Civil Service is there to do.
Getting things done is not just about winning a battle of ideas, it is about marrying ideas for change with mechanisms to deliver that agenda.
We know that can happen. Both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair set direction and implemented change. They knew that winning an election was not enough, and that they needed to excel at the craft and graft of governing. Both, not coincidentally, brought on civil servants who knew how to help them do it.
There’s a lesson there. The deep state really is here to help. If only Truss, as prime minister, had known it.