Has Britain Really Become Ungovernable?

The 6-7 craze is about to turn from a meaningless, but ultimately fun, meme into something decidedly more serious: the number of UK Prime Ministers in the last 10 years. British firms and families are battling spiralling energy bills while our towns and cities are disfigured by rashes of vape shops, epidemics of shoplifting and roads full of potholes. Police, health and other public services are struggling to cope, but politicians and bureaucrats seem incapable of fixing the problems.

No wonder people are asking whether Britain has become ungovernable.

But that would be looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Britain hasn’t suddenly become stroppier or more complicated than before. The real problem is politicians and their officials who expensively bandage symptoms rather than curing underlying causes. It’s the leaders, not the led.

The latest example comes from Keir Starmer’s ‘Mr Fixit’ Minister Darren Jones, who announced new delivery units for every Government Department in Whitehall this week, to navigate the process blockages that are holding everything back. But the answer to sclerotic bureaucracy can’t be more bureaucracy. Rather than teaching officials to play better hopscotch by dancing around the pitfalls that block progress, they should be filling in the holes to run over the top of them instead.