Starmer’s start-up state

Why doesn’t government work? Why is one of the richest, smartest, most literate, technically advanced nations on earth unable to eliminate poverty, fix our roads, provide decent healthcare, improve our schools, clean up our rivers, build enough houses and make the trains run on time? Not all at once. Not even one thing at a time. 

It is one of the defining mysteries of our times. Britain is not alone in facing this conundrum, of course. But it is the most enduring cause of political upheaval and aimless populism. It’s the eternal spanner in the works.

Brits are bright. For what it’s worth, the UK’s average IQ is a whisker under 100. That puts us in the top 15 nations: below Japan, top with 106.48, and just above the USA at 97.3. Brits are creative and inventive: the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, the light bulb, the jet engine, the world wide web, Paddington Bear. 

For a country as small as it is, the UK’s contribution to the world of science, technology and the arts is astonishing. The UK has the second highest number of Nobel Laureates (142) after the US. 

The UK is heaving with bright young entrepreneurs. According to the Hurun Research company, the UK (including London) has incubated more “unicorns” (private startups with a valuation greater than $1 billion) than any country after the US, China and India. 

The Civil Service, the engine room of government, is stuffed full of bright, ambitious people. They may, like Sir Humphrey, appear pompous, arrogant and out of touch with the real world. But it’s nevertheless a vast depositary of grey matter waiting to be harnessed. 

So what’s the problem? 

It’s not a think-tank question. If a government knows what it wants to do but can’t get things done, no amount of rebranding, setting targets or defining missions will help. Levers will be pulled, gears will grind, but UK PLC will keep spinning its wheels. 

It’s also a life and death question for governments. Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, knows this. It doesn’t matter how big his majority in Parliament is. Or how inconsequential the opposition has become. 

Never mind the numbers: if by the end of his first term in 2028 people don’t feel better off, if our daily lives, if getting to work, buying a house, getting a GP appointment has not improved, he will be out. And who knows what comes next?

Starmer speaks of a ”broken state”. It’s a recurring theme whenever ministers speak. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, says the NHS was “broken by the Tories”. He would, of course. Rubbishing outgoing governments is the first hand incoming ones play.  

And there is usually some truth to the charge. Political decisions taken between 2010 and 2024 have undoubtedly weakened not just the NHS but wider public services that shape health and care: low capital investment, slashed health budgets, staff shortages due to Brexit and the endless push and pull of competing ideologies.  

All (European) democracies are subject to ideological swings. But these tend to be confined to particular areas of policy, the most obvious of which is immigration. There is a broad consensus that the state has a role to play as the enabler of progress. 

Britain’s mid-Atlantic mindset, on the other hand, and its love-hate relationship with its biggest trading partner (Europe), condemns it to a perpetual pendulum between the state as a cure-all and the state as an obstacle. 

Linked to this debilitating frame of mind are the left-wing/right-wing playbooks of rotten corporations at one end and welfare state strivers and scroungers at the other. Either: all will be well if we just stuff wokeism back in its box and free the spirit. Or: all will be well if we can curb the powers of the “establishment”, the multinationals, “them”.

The trouble with investing either the state or the market with superpowers is that it diminishes our obligation as individuals to undertake the tricky job of problem-solving. Experience has taught us it’s also nonsense. 

Fixing the state depends not just on ideas or money. It relies primarily on our (flawed) ability to figure out what’s gone wrong, what to do next and how to do it. Often, this will be one small step at a time. And we must pick the right people to do it. 

Big ideas have their place. Politicians love them because they offer a shot at immortality. But they can also have big, unintended consequences. The accumulation of power – real power unhindered by borders – by the corporate world as a result of deregulation has led to a loss of control by voters (and to a certain extent by governments) over their lives. 

This is not an argument for more state power, although restoring our faith in the ability of the state to enable good things to happen is crucial to the health of our democracy. It is an argument for realism and patience. 

Politicians under the cosh of the electoral cycle tend to reach for glib solutions. Cut immigration and you’ll fix the housing crisis. Pour more money into the NHS and waiting lists will shrink. We know it’s not that simple. But we don’t like nuance. Nuance doesn’t fit into a tweet or a soundbite or a headline. Nuance takes hard work and, perhaps most important, an acknowledgement that you haven’t got all the answers from the off. 

Our problems are complex. Solving one won’t solve everything. Problem-solving, like science, is often a question of trial and error. It took Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards over a decade successfully to enable the birth of the first IVF baby — another British success story. 

Starmer has had a shocking start in government. Trial and error personified. But none of his setbacks are life-threatening. What matters is if he can deliver some of the change he promises over the Parliament and make Britain’s life better. 

Pat McFadden, his owlish senior Cabinet Office minister and intellectual point man, recently spoke of a test-and-learn approach to change. Change, he said, could only come if the state started behaving “more like a start-up”. It sounds risky. And it is. But it makes a lot of sense. 

Speaking at University College London he said: “ I’m going to begin by saying something that politicians don’t say very often (though they probably should) which is that I haven’t got all this figured out from beginning to end.”

This is the crux. We demand – the media and the opposition demands demands, Elon Musk demands — instant wisdom. Thinking a policy through is one thing. Expecting to work out exactly as planned without change or refinement or dropping it altogether is delusional. 

“If we keep governing as we have,” McFadden said, “we won’t achieve anything.” He suggests an alternative approach. “Test it. Fix the problems. Change the design. Test it again. Tweak it again. And so on, and so on, for as long as you provide the service. Suddenly, the most important question isn’t, ‘How do we get this right the first time?’. It’s ‘How do we make this better by next Friday?’”

He will make a start by deploying mixed teams of policy-makers, digital experts and entrepreneurs to change idle working cultures set in their ways. It has worked. The transformation of the Passport Office (under the Tories) is one example. You can now get a passport in three weeks. Three days or even less, if you pay an extra fee. 

Such an approach is not apolitical or value-free. Governments of the Left will start from one side of the centre line, those of the Right on the other. That’s politics. 

What matters is remedying the dire loss faith in whether politics and government can deliver much at all. “That is a loss of faith to which we should all pay heed,” says McFadden. Indeed we should. The alternative is a final collapse in trust and the rise of politicians who promise the earth and deliver mobocracy. 

But will we allow it? 

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