Whoever you vote for, the Blob wins

00:00 11:28

Matt Ridley has narrated this article for you to listen to.

At the age of 66 I feel like a first-time voter. As a member of the House of Lords, I was not allowed to vote in the last three general elections. But I retired from the House in 2021, so democracy here I come. I shall scan the ballot paper with interest: who is standing for head of the Office of Budget Responsibility, or chair of the Climate Change Committee? I would like to read their manifestos, since they seem to be the folk whose ‘models’ tell the country what it must do, brooking no dissent.

What’s that you say? It doesn’t work that way? How quaint of me to think that the mighty quangocrats who wield so much power should have meaningful accountability to parliament, let alone the people. Joking aside, I have now seen how government works close up. Stealthily but steadily, almost all real political power has been stripped from elected councillors, MPs and even ministers over the past two decades by ‘officials’ and handed to ‘experts’ in quangos, nationalised industries, arms-length bodies and courts.

Watch a clip of Yes Minister and it’s like looking at something from the political Cretaceous period, because Humphrey and Hacker were on equal terms. Today, when Hacker suggests a policy, Humphrey reminds him that he has devolved responsibility to the National Paperclips Authority, or it’s not within his power, or judicial review will stop it, or it’s against human rights law, or he’s bullying Bernard by asking him to turn up to work.

Rory Stewart tells alarming stories of civil service obstruction in his memoir. When he tried to stop aid going to jihadis in Syria, he was told it was not within his power, then that the decision came from a ‘small group’ of senior civil servants who outranked him.