It is one thing to insist that the executive operates within the constraints of the law; it is quite another, and grossly improper, to claim that the Government cannot try to pass new legislation to alter those constraints.
We hurl abuse at here-today-gone-tomorrow politicians and their advisers, while the permanent state flourishes like a green bay tree.
We need higher public sector productivity, lower costs of government, and a lower deficit. This can advanced with tax cuts which lower prices, create more supply, and boost incomes and profits to tax at home.
Hamas’ supporters or the authorities? Sunak needs to show that offenders will be prosecuted – and, if the situation deteriorates, to push for march bans, shuffle his Cabinet and show an all-party front with Starmer.
The second part of our series on reducing demand for government, in which we set out a programme for change – focused on families, civil society and government.
You’d have thought it in jest if you’d been told that for £50 per citizen, a “Taskforce” drawn from the private sector would operate with a degree of independence from Whitehall, take risks and secure 357 million vaccine doses in nine months – all under-budget.
The First Minister stands accused of having officials draw up new statistics to “reverse engineer” an excuse for his wildly inaccurate statements about an independent Scotland’s energy potential.
If ministers are going to start holding senior mandarins publicly accountable for their alleged failures, it is inevitable that those officials are going to start publicly defending their records.
There is nothing to stop the Scottish Nationalists, or their sympathisers, producing policy privately, or supporting think-tanks to do so on their behalf. But they should pay for such work out of their own funds. (If they can find them.)
At Westminster, meanwhile, we’ve got the latest development in what seems to be the new, less shouty iteration of so-called muscular unionism.
His measured communications approach is superior to Boris Johnson and Liz Truss’s tendency towards needless provocation without any commitment to structural reform. But that reform must happen, regardless of how unpopular it may be.
Above all, they shouldn’t become preoccupied with Woke to the exclusion of everything else. This is the trap that many Labour backbenchers and much of the Left is falling into.
You don’t need to buy the wilder conspiracy theories about a deep state to recognise that it would be irresponsible to ignore the machinery of government.
Review Net Zero interventions, cut immigration; freeze Civil Service recruitment, reduce railway subsidies – and tell the Bank of England to stop selling bonds at a loss.
Let’s not waste money on a duplicate of already existing regulatory infrastructure. Let’s either recognise international standards on these regulations, or replace them with better regulation.