\n<\/p>\n
Downing Street only has itself to blame for failing to exercise power,
Whitehall experts have said, after a former No 10 adviser said that lobbying by a \u201cpolitical perma-class\u201d had distracted the government from voters\u2019 priorities.<\/p>\n
Paul Ovenden prompted a debate about how Keir Starmer\u2019s administration is governing after criticising what he described as the \u201csheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time\u201d.<\/p>\n
In particular, the former Downing Street strategist highlighted the effort spent on freeing the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who has previously posted on X about killing Zionists, saying colleagues had joked about the campaign as a \u201ctotem of the ceaseless sapping of time and energy by people obsessed with fringe issues\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ovenden hit out at what he called the \u201csupremacy of the stakeholder state\u201d, arguing the government had been hobbled by a \u201ccomplex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations\u201d, although he stressed that many civil servants themselves wanted to change the system.<\/p>\n
He claimed the stakeholder state was \u201cincubated by a political perma-class that exists within every party and every department \u2013 one whose entire focus is on preserving their status within a system that gives them meaning\u201d. Ovenden said the solution was a \u201cgovernment with a stiffened spine and renewed purpose\u201d that could dismantle much of the system quickly and find its nerve again.<\/p>\n
Ovenden\u2019s analysis is shared by many in Downing Street, including the prime minister, who complained last month: \u201cEvery time I go to pull a lever there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, [and] arm\u2019s-length bodies that mean that the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, a number of figures with expertise in government said ministers ultimately remained in charge and already had the power to change the system they complained about.<\/p>\n
Alex Thomas, the programme director at the Institute for Government, said: \u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s wrong on it being hard to get stuff done, but am not sure the \u2018stakeholder\u2019 framing is helpful.<\/p>\n
\u201cGovernment should be talking to people \u2026 and we know what the problems with government are \u2013 a weak centre in a highly centralised state, a lack of expertise because of political and civil service churn, and poor performance management. What\u2019s needed to address those is sustained focus and political agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA, the senior civil servants\u2019 union, said the prime minister and his team had the ability to change the system if they wanted to, and Ovenden\u2019s diagnosis of \u201cconflicting power bases\u201d was a \u201creasonable analysis\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIf you think that\u2019s got to change, it\u2019s only there because ministers put it there in the first place. The civil service didn\u2019t put it there. And it can only change if there\u2019s strong political will to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A former Labour adviser and aide to Tony Blair, John McTernan, said ministers had to bear responsibility for the government\u2019s current position.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThe biggest errors this government has made \u2013 including cutting winter fuel payments, trying to cut disability payments and refusing to cut the two-child benefit cap until recently \u2013 have been made by No 10 in conjunction with the Treasury.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a government that is always getting its own way but is always looking for someone else to blame for the consequences of its own actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another former Labour adviser, Tom Baldwin, Starmer\u2019s biographer, said it was right for the government to focus on issues important to voters at a time when delivering change was \u201cgrindingly difficult\u201d, but reforming Whitehall risked becoming a distraction.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cAlthough almost everyone says Whitehall\u2019s often sclerotic machinery can be improved, I\u2019m pretty sure the PM wants to start the new year by talking about issues that really matter to the public like living standards, public services, immigration and the intensely dangerous situation abroad.<\/p>\n
\u201cBanging on about Whitehall quangos or red tape would be yet another distraction or even risk creating the impression that you\u2019re just making excuses.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government declined to comment on Ovenden\u2019s intervention, his first public remarks since resigning in September after it emerged he had sent inappropriate messages about the Labour MP Diane Abbott eight years earlier.<\/p>\n
As one of a handful of advisers close to Starmer since his days in opposition, Ovenden\u2019s departure was widely regarded as a blow to the prime minister.<\/p>\n
Ovenden said Abd el-Fattah\u2019s case was one of several examples of the government becoming distracted from its main objectives, alongside rows over reparations for former colonies and banning smoking in pub gardens.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cAt a time when the public is getting more and more frustrated, more and more fed up with inaction, more and more fed up with distraction, in my opinion, we simply can\u2019t afford to be spending their time on what I consider distractions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Downing Street only has itself to blame for failing to exercise power,Whitehall experts have said, after a former No 10 adviser said that lobbying by a \u201cpolitical perma-class\u201d had distracted the government from voters\u2019 priorities. Paul Ovenden prompted a debate about how Keir Starmer\u2019s administration is governing after criticising what he described as the \u201csheer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[7332,2346,2381,320,2519,7645,745,1276,13430],"class_list":{"0":"post-40063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-blame","9":"tag-civil","10":"tag-downing","11":"tag-experts","12":"tag-grip","13":"tag-lack","14":"tag-service","15":"tag-street","16":"tag-whitehall"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}