⚡ How Reform will take back control

Recent polls suggest that were an election to be held in the UK today, Reform would comfortably win. More in Common put it at a majority of 112 seats over all other parties combined.

Danny Kruger is the man responsible for ensuring that Reform can actually implement their policy proposals if elected; ensuring they are not hamstrung by, as Keir Starmer put it, “a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arm’s-length bodies that mean that the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than… it ought to be.”

In the interview below, we cover:

• The problem diagnosis: what is the wrong with the current set up, and what Reform want to restore.

• The Starmer case study: what lessons Danny took from Labour’s ascension to power—and what Reform will do differently as a result.

• What it means for you: Reform intend to build a thick manifesto—engagement now is the route to influencing it.

Enjoy,

Tom

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The goal: restoration of the British state

The underlying architecture of the British state is the best in the world. Reform makes it clear: we are very radical in our desire for change, but we want restoration, not revolution.

I'd like to see a revival of the cabinet committee as a meaningful decision-making forum, and restore the role of the secretariat–able officials and advisers who support the cabinet–which is what the Cabinet Office was intended to do.

The notion of the impartial civil service is an admirable one, but there's something essentially broken about the Northcote-Trevelyan model of a professional civil service operating independently of party politics. If we believe in those principles, we're going to have to change a lot about the way it works.

The executive centre is clogged and dysfunctional

Policy is being developed by colleagues led by Zia Yusuf, but downstream of that is the work of thinking about how we actually operationalise that policy. That includes thinking in general terms about the machinery of government—how we ensure that the decisions made by ministers are given effect—as well as how we deliver on manifesto commitments.

There will be some obvious, very immediate priorities around economic policy, around migration, law and order, and so on, that we'll want to see given effect as fast as possible. My job is asking: how do we do that given the state of the system?

The challenge is partly a pretty clogged-up centre. The process of decision-making at the heart of government is dysfunctional, with a bloated and incoherent Cabinet Office, much duplication of roles, all sorts of dysfunctions in the Civil Service, and the inability of ministers, particularly the prime minister, to give effect to his or her wishes.

So, we need to reform the model of decision-making, advice, and implementation that happens around the centre of government.

The challenge goes beyond ministerial departments

Over the last 25 years, successive governments have outsourced a range of functions to arms-length bodies of one sort or another* in an attempt to depoliticise, professionalise, and improve the quality of service.

The result is that we've created unaccountable bureaucracies which are no more efficient than the old model of centralised Whitehall delivery, but have the additional disadvantage of a lack of proper accountability to ministers and therefore to Parliament. So, how do we take back control of the government itself?

And how do we approach the challenge of the House of Lords, where there's a massive inbuilt majority against what a Reform government would want to do? How much can we rely on the Salisbury Convention or the Parliament Act? We will need to create new Reform peers (we currently have none)... will that be enough to ensure that mandated manifesto commitments are not endlessly delayed or frustrated altogether in the Lords?

* Examples include non-ministerial departments like HM Revenue & Customs or the Charity Commission, and quangos like the National Lottery Heritage Fund or the Forestry Commission.

When we say rule of law, what do we mean?

In recent times you've seen the development of judicial review, notions of fundamental rights as being superior to statute, and significant activism on the part of judges right to the top.*

While preserving the rule of law–the judiciary needs to operate without political interference–how do we ensure that the rule of law means the actual rule of law made in Parliament and through case law, rather than the rule of lawyers?

* Previous Policy Unstuck guest Lord Sumption, the former Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, explores this in his book Democracy and the Rule of Law and his Reith Lectures.

What Reform learned from Starmer’s playbook

Starmer was convinced, probably based on his own experience of being one of the 'Wednesday Morning Colleagues,' that the system would work for him.

He thought that based on his sympathy with the system and his belief in public service, that when he arrived with a manifesto he would simply switch on the Rolls-Royce machinery, and it would purr into life and drive in the direction of the New Jerusalem.

But it didn't.

The great lesson there is: have a plan. 

If you see what happens when a sympathetic government comes in, one that is supportive of the civil service and whose policy ambitions are on the soft left, and they still fail… imagine what it will be like when a government arrives that is pretty hostile to the current ways of working and has policies most senior civil servants object to. 

We intend to arrive in government with much more than just a thin manifesto of headline aspirations. There will be a proper plan. It will guide us, but it will also signal in advance what is expected of the system so no one can say, 'you didn't tell us what you were going to do.'

The door is open for policy engagement

Across the whole spectrum of policy, there's a role for all organisations to submit ideas. If charities choose to sit on the sidelines with a cross look on their face because they don't like Reform, that's their choice. But there will genuinely be a willingness on our part to listen and engage. 

We are going to go into government with a comprehensive plan, so the opportunity to make policy in opposition is much fuller. We want to do that in an open way because we don't have the capacity internally to do everything. 

I challenge the sector to engage in good faith with a party that has 30% of the popular support.

A Reform government will start with a bang

The public are very attuned to reality. The despair they felt so soon after Starmer came in was because it was very quickly clear that this was another bunch getting into a total mess about trivialities. That's the 'uni-party'; you vote for different ministers but nothing changes.

We're going to do things differently.

The public needs to see us doing things that are structurally meaningful from day one. To a certain extent, that will communicate itself by the howls of outrage we're going to encounter from established powers. 

We intend to be ready for them.

Suggested additional reading for those of you that got this far, both written by Danny: ‘Radical change to deliver a smaller, better civil service’ and ‘Restoring Government.’