PART 1. INTRODUCTION

This is the latest in the Ideas series, following Solarpunk and Transhumanism. It deals with the “Blob”, the concept of an administrative state, a bureaucracy refractory to democratic control by governments. Such states result in state inertia as policies are added slowly but rarely removed. The citations will be given in the comments section.

PART 2. DOES IT EXIST?

Let’s get one thing straight at the beginning. Of course the Blob exists. The idea of a bureaucratic state running things by its own lights regardless of government is the central thesis of “Yes Minister”, a Thatcher-era government sitcom based on post-war political events and centres public choice economics,[21] implicitly in the programme and explicitly in the books. The last chapter of the novelisation, “The National Education Service” ends with the protagonist realizing that “…my plans were turning to dust. Like all my plans. Suddenly I saw, with a real clarity that I’d never enjoyed before, that although I might win the occasional policy victory, or make some reforms, or be indulged with a few scraps from the table, nothing fundamental was ever ever going to change…”.[22]

So yes. The Blob exists.

But the question as to whether the Blob exists is a boring question. More interesting questions are “how did this happen”, “what can be done to stop it”, and “why won’t we fix it”. Let’s consider them.

PART 3. POST-WAR INTERNATIONAL ORDER

Following WWII theoreticians in Western democracies realized that democracy unchecked could lead to genocides. To prevent this an international network of bodies from the United Nations downwards were set up to monitor and constrain nation states. The political theorist John Keane names this “monitory democracy”[31] and is characterized by continuous public scrutiny and control of power. Unlike traditional forms of democracy that primarily focus on periodic elections and majority rule, monitory democracy emphasizes mechanisms to monitor and check the exercise of power. fostering a culture of vigilance and accountability.

So instead of a choropleth of nation states, in the 1940s and 1950s supranational and transnational entities such as the UN, International Court of Justice, United Nations Security Council, the IMF, the Bretton Woods system, the Council of Europe, the ECtHR and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights began to appear.

PART 4. 1945-1979

After WWII the UK was a wreck. Over four million British servicemen and women were demobbed with experience of organization and how to fire a gun, and decided they would like to have some decent living conditions please. Government had to expand to provide this.

Consequently, various governments between 1945 and 1979 converted a warfare state into a welfare state, with the NHS created ex nihilo. Governments and councils, faced with building millions of houses created development corporations such as the Milton Keynes Development Corporation. Corporations with “Central”, “Britain” or “National” in the title multiplied: British Coal, British Steel, British Gas, British Aerospace, National Coal Board, the Central Land Board, the Central Electricity Generating Board, the Central Office of Information.

By the 70’s British corporatism, characterized by a collaborative approach between the government, businesses, and trade unions to manage the economy and social policies, and working through institutions like the National Economic Development Council (NEDC), had dragged the lives of ordinary men and women from extreme poverty and squalor to warmth, cleanliness, health and, if not prosperity, at least freedom from degradation.

But it didn’t last.

PART 5. 1979-1997

The partial collapse of Bretton Woods, the oil shock, and the rise of international travel and trade made corporatism untenable. Politicians such as Heath, Wilson and especially former trade-union official Callaghan could not cope with this new era. Enter Thatcher.

Using her belief in Hayekian freedom, Thatcher rejected corporatism and disassembled the welfare state in part, devolving corporate power to private bodies via privatisation or constraint, with oversight by regulatory bodies. Examples include the Central Electricity Generating Board which was split into Powergen, National Power and overseen by the Office of Electricity Regulation, and the Transport Act 1985 which forced local councils to replace bus corporations with private companies such as Stagecoach. This pattern carried on: local authorities were castrated, national bodies were privatized, regulatory bodies such as OFWAT, OFSTED, OFFER, OFGEM, OFTEL, ORR proliferated.

But this process only extended the Blob. The politicians were still held politically responsible for trains, buses, health etc., but had lost control of the command structure. The academic Dr Abby Innes[51] points out that Thatcherite neoliberalism and late Soviet communism arrived at the same logical point, with governments unable to wield power, instead engaging in bargaining games they couldn’t win with suppliers and taking refuge in process. The Blob grew once more…

PART 6. 1997-2010

Thatcher’s redistribution from public to private in the economic sphere was then matched and exceeded by Blair and Brown separating powers in the constitutional sphere. The Westminster Government devolved powers to smaller ones at Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh, and even bought Dublin into play via the British-Irish Council. The Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (the “Law Lords”) was converted into the Supreme Court, and the role of the Lord Chancellor was spread over other individuals. The Human Rights Act 1998, the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Equality Act 2010 bound Parliament’s successors. At each point power was transferred from Westminster to elsewhere and elsewhen, and with power went control. The Blob grew again.

In two separate lectures at PopCon and elsewhere Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg[61] and David Starkey[62] point out that this was constitutionally illiterate. Britain is not a constitutional federal republic like the United States, it’s a constitutional monarchy and the org chart is different. The concept of separation of powers is not inherent to the British state and just created more bureaucracy, binding future governments and parliaments to decisions outwhen and outwith them.

PART 7. 2010-2019

The Conservative administrations of 2010-2019 were preoccupied with Brexit and the Blob continued to evolve unconstrained. The author Anthony Selsdon[71] noted Cameron’s horror when he realized the implications of Lansley’s health reforms putting NHS control at arm’s length and the efforts Cameron made to regain command and control thereafter.

But a subtler manifestation was the rise of the quasi-independent expert. Starting with the Scottish referendum the Government gradually became incapable of winning an argument. It won the Scottish referendum by the skin of its teeth but the techniques learned by campaigners were deployed better and harder in the Brexit referendum, with every Government expert and report countered by a soi-disant “independent” one in the other direction. This inability to control the narrative would become lethally important later.

PART 8. 2019-2024

By now the Blob had evolved from chestburster to xenomorph to Queen. The refusal of the Supreme Court to allow prorogation and the involvement of the Bank of England and other bodies in the fall of Liz Truss[81] highlighted the impotence of the Government. During Covid the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) was countered by a group calling itself “Independent SAGE”, and without the Central Office of Information the Government was reduced to bringing in Number 10’s Behavioural Insights Team, the Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit, the DCMS’s Counter Disinformation Cell and – incredibly – the 77th Brigade[82][84], part of the 6th Division of the Army which is focused on expeditionary, unconventional and information warfare.[83] Instead of leaning on friendly editors and D-notices like the good old days, the Government had to call in the only institution it could still command, the Army, to manufacture consent.

PART 9. WHERE ARE WE

It is 2024. The UK Government is finding it more and more difficult to exert control, and the 2010-2024 governments lost control more than once. It cannot manufacture consent to win an argument because the Internet will counter-argue whatever the cause. It cannot deliver the public services demanded by the public because private bodies will defy them. It cannot define justice externally and internally because international and national courts will override them. It cannot govern the Celtic nations because they are self-governed. It promises everything and delivers nothing.

PART 10: WHAT TO DO

The promised freedoms and “bonfire of the quangos” of Brexit have not materialized. Government ministers are reduced to complaining and learned helplessness, a role some have adopted far too easily and to their discredit. Instead of keening and rending their cloth, they need to formulate a plan and get people to agree to it. But where can such a plan be found? The Policy Exchange’s policy paper[101] “Getting a Grip on the System” lays out a plan but limits itself to realignment: firmer controls over the existing bodies via various delivery units. Curing bureaucracy with bureaucracy.

A more radical option is afforded by the American Heritage Foundation’s “Project2025”,[102] an umbrella term encompassing policy papers, personnel lists and cadre training groups. It outlines four options which I will call realignment, relief, removal and reintegration. “Realignment” we have dealt with, “relief” is the removal of underperforming officials and replacement with old ones on the Army model, “removal” is the destruction of unnecessary bodies and “reintegration” is the enfolding of arm’s length bodies back into the civil service. This has a greater chance of success.

PART 11: WILL AND WONT

Plans are useless without will and a knowledge of the counterparties. By using terms such as “deep state” the outgoing Conservative politicians betray their naivete: this is not an X-Files conspiracy but a logical cumulation of sixty years of deliberate policy. Whatever you may think of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, the Equality Act 2010, OFWAT, OFSTED, OFGEM, OBR, ECHR, Stagecoach, Thames Water, or the Supreme Court, they were not installed by evil geniuses but by good people and politicians to achieve a specific goal. Until that is understood and a realistic plan is formulated to correct the situation and create the consent necessary, the politicians will just continue howling at the moon.

But a darker thought occurs: do people actually *want* to fix the Blob at all? In my thirteen-year time at PB I have become uncomfortably convinced that the British do not want freedom but safety, and that the Blob bodies are retained not thru inertia but deliberately. In his lecture, David Starkey was greeted by a question which threw him. It was this:

“Is the Equality Act so bad? In theory it protects not just minorities or women or gay people, it says you can’t discriminate on the basis of race or sex or sexuality also the belief-based discrimination part is actively working to protect conservatives, liberals, gender critical feminists, believers in color blindness. Should we scrap it? I’m not really sure”.[111]

The Blob gives employment to civil servants, comfort to those afraid of change, succor to those who desire power without Government oversight, excuses to those who have failed, and protects those who desire safety over freedom. That’s a rather large section of the British public and they have votes. To overcome this would require a Thatcher and a decade-long project.

Who on the current scene fits that description?

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