"British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself"

BBC: 2nd January 2026: Article on the BBC reporting on Paul Ovenden's Times article analysing why government is not working. Sound familiar?

In the Times, Ovenden writes

"...Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers... 

If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998)...

...A government with a stiffened spine and renewed purpose could dismantle much of the Stakeholder State quickly. In doing so it would... would salvage something precious — the sense that politics can deliver the change people are crying out for..."