YOU’D be forgiven for thinking that Donald Trump has been in power for years, not weeks, given the speed at which the US President is shifting the dial of domestic and global politics. Given what we witnessed in his first term, it was inevitable that Trump would be dynamic, bold and decisive but perhaps not even the most clairvoyant of political commentators could predict this.
Swathes of Executive Orders were unveiled on Trump’s first day in office, ranging from placing tariffs on imports of foreign goods to reshaping the military. However, one of the most defining features of Trump’s early days in office is a mindset shift, underpinned by the private sector principles of efficiency and productivity.
The aptly named DOGE, spearheaded by Elon Musk, is a source of great controversy among liberal commentators for a perceived attack on the workforce. The truth remains though that the Department for Government Efficiency has been established to weed out and eradicate the billions of dollars’ worth of waste that is blighting the US economy and affecting everyday workers and businesses. For too long, Western democracies have failed to act on waste and instead actively protect the pockets of those benefiting from fraud and bloating of the state.
No wonder Trump and Musk are ruffling the feathers of the bureaucrats. The UK would do well to take note of this and replicate it with its own swollen Civil Service. Is this a pipe dream? Probably, with Starmer at the helm. However, if he is serious about his ‘growth’ agenda, then the first thing the Prime Minister could do is get his own house in order.
There is a quaint notion that the Civil Service is a bastion of independence and a home for the nation’s best and brightest. While this perception is thankfully waning among the public, there is still a certain section of society which believes the state blob is in fact a wonderful institution that we should not just be proud of but protect with impunity.
The problem with the Civil Service is that it is a massively bloated, leftist machine which has been used as a vehicle for the establishment to promote its own agenda and act as mouthpieces for the politicians of the day and not for the good of the public.
How have we got here though? Well, it is simple. The Civil Service takes on around 1,000 graduates each year who are paid far less than they would be in the private sector. This means the roles attract a certain type of graduate, entrenched in the belief that the state should have an overwhelming role in running the lives of the people.
As their careers progress, the talented ones will move into the private sector for more prosperous and challenging positions – leaving the incompetents and the ideologues at the top of the tree, hiring another generation of dogmatic ‘yes men and women’ ready to push the leftist agenda of the Civil Service, regardless of what party happens to be in power at the time.
It is time that we take a leaf out of Trump and Musk’s book, and stop this self-serving, self-perpetuating cycle of mediocrity. Policymakers, if they really have any of our best interests at heart, would seek to introduce a Civil Service Reform Bill which would clear out the dead wood and ensure that Civil Servants could be appointed by the government of the day to get things done.
In the first instance, under Labour, this could be a real shock to the system but honestly, how much worse can things get? Beyond Labour’s inevitable election loss, though, this would certainly pave the way for a political revolution and an opportunity for the UK to act as an innovative and dynamic economy, not as a country solely designed to protect its own baffling levels of mediocrity.
