Mission impossible: Boris’s attempt to rewire the British government

It’s never a good sign when a government relaunches itself. Look what happened at the end of Theresa May’s time in power — there was a relaunch almost every other week, each one with diminishing effect. But although it has been over-hyped, Boris Johnson’s attempt to start again isn’t a mere re-branding exercise. It is not just about rehashing policy proposals but about trying to tackle the dysfunction at the heart of the state. The PM is attempting to do something past leaders have thought to be an impossible job: to rewire the whole system.

Johnson has time on his side — four years to get things back on track — and a Commons majority. But there’s a paradox at the heart of this big reform project: if he’s so frank, almost brutal, about the failings of government, how can he be pinning his hopes on government to solve this country’s economic problems?

In normal circumstances, a politician’s view of the efficiency of government informs their view on the role of the state. The post-war Labour government was animated by the belief that ‘the man in Whitehall knows best’, and so the state became ever more involved in both the economy and in people’s everyday lives. Margaret Thatcher thought individuals were better judges of their own needs than government, and set about rolling back the frontiers of the state. This No. 10 thinks that the British administrative state is deeply flawed, dysfunctional even, but nevertheless it is relying on government, of a reformed kind, to deliver the changes it believes are crucial to this country’s future prosperity.

If Michael Gove thinks the civil service is so out of sympathy with the majority of the country, then why isn’t he proposing to cut this flawed Leviathan down to size? The Thatcher/Reagan approach would seem to be a more logical reaction to the failings of government.