US President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk to jointly lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (Doge?) in an effort to cut wasteful government spending. In this largely advisory role, Musk has been tasked with “dismantling government bureaucracy” and finding much-needed savings in Washington, DC. And you can already hear the panicked shrieks from career bureaucrats.
Musk has made no secret of his plans. Throughout Trump’s campaign trail, he suggested cutting nearly a third of the federal government’s $6.7trillion budget (a saving of almost $2trillion). And documenting all actions of this new department online for “maximum transparency”. A very welcome change.
But I’m sure his plans don’t stop there. And he’s sure to ruffle some feathers. Perhaps he’ll fill the Pentagon with Tesla robots and AI vending machines. Or even install a toilet that plays Bruce Springsteen when it flushes?
This is the same man who fired 80% of Twitter’s staff upon its purchase, despite all the naysayers’ warnings of an apocalyptic collapse that never materialised at the social media giant. It turns out bone-idle administrators drunk on Starbucks lattes are not as productive as you might think.
Either way, Musk means business. And it’s time we did the same here in Britain.
For too long, we have stomached the incompetence of glorified pen-pushers in Westminster and Whitehall – all with little industry or business experience to speak of. Instead of successful entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, who has built a billion-dollar business, amassed a net worth of $300billion, and revolutionised manufacturing and technology, we are stuck with PPE graduates from Oxford who fear change almost as much as their own shadows.
It’s why the Cabinet Office alone spends an enormous £265billion a year on quangos employing 300,000 people collectively. Yet, contrary to popular belief, the rot runs much deeper than a few rainbow pedestrian crossings and gold-plated toilets.
Successive governments have promised to tackle the ‘blob’, only to make the problem worse when the next election is far enough into the future. Even the Conservative party, which ironically boasts of being the party of ‘fiscal discipline’, oversaw an increase in government spending of nearly £200billion a year since 2019. And some 600,000 more people have been employed in the public sector since.
Has growth increased? Are outcomes any better? Do Britons believe that the quality of public services is improving? Of course not. We are funnelling money into inefficient black holes, and no one is being held accountable. It doesn’t help that our politicians don’t have a clue what they are doing, since none of them have run successful businesses themselves.
Even Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who touts her credentials as an “economist” and former Bank of England employee, is clueless. Just recently, she told the likes of Tesco and Wetherspoons, who have confirmed that they will increase their prices due to tax hikes, that “they could absorb the extra business costs by becoming more efficient”.
Seriously? What a tone-deaf response. These are already some of the most efficient firms in the world. And if it’s so easy, why doesn’t she make the NHS and Civil Service more efficient? Or better yet, she could stop spending £8million a day putting up asylum seekers in hotels.
Unsurprisingly, Ms Reeves’s mindset permeates much of Westminster. Just look at the evidence. The ‘blob’ is as inefficient as it is expensive; most councils are in debt and, when it comes to the NHS, I couldn’t design a less efficient system if you paid me £200billion.
For all their talk of “cutting red tape”, Labour will only make things worse. Starmer’s cabinet has never seen a quango it doesn’t like. In the four months since taking power, Labour has already set up a vast array of new arms length bodies, including Great British Energy, the National Wealth Fund, the Industrial Strategy Council, the National Jobs and Careers Service, the Fair Work Agency, Skills England, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, and the Passenger Standards Authority.
There is also the new Ethics and Integrity Commission, the Border Security Command, the School Support Staff Negotiating Body and the Independent Football Regulator in the works. And all of these will be staffed by unelected bureaucrats, happy to pay lip service to whichever ministry guarantees their cushy pensions.
For too long, we have been held back by the unwillingness of governments to challenge rigid orthodoxy in Whitehall. After all, the Blob knows best. In both Britain and America, it is filled with busybodies who are unelected, under-qualified and overpaid.
Elon Musk is a very welcome change. Britain, too, needs someone like him to slash through the blob, Doge-style.
