Why Downing Street thinks that to get anything done it must first fix the machinery of Britain's government
THE SUSPICION with which many Brexiteers have long regarded Brussels has come to be matched by an equal mistrust of Whitehall. After repeated delays to Britain’s exit from the European Union, many Leavers became convinced thatofficials were out to subvert the will of the people. Yet for Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief adviser and brains behind the Leave campaign, the frustration with the civil service goes back much further.
Civil service reform is not usually a priority for a new administration. Most turn their attention to it only after finding their initial vim frustrated. At the start of her second term, Margaret Thatcher tried to make officials more accountable and to focus them on outcomes. At the start of his, Tony Blair brought in Michael Barber, who had worked on school reform, to split the government’s aims into measurable targets and pursue them relentlessly.
Another part of the answer, Mr Cummings believes, lies in hiring brilliant people to work on specific problems outside of bureaucratic constraints. He points to the success of America’s work on intercontinental ballistic missiles and some aspects of the Apollo programme in the 1950s and 1960s, which brought the world’s best scientists and engineers into government projects.
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