"Britain’s unelected and ineffective quangocrats are already amassing more power under Labour."
Spiked: 14th August 2024: James Woudhuysen (journalist) warns about why we should be worried about the Prime Minister's plans to grow 'the Blob'
"How worried should we be about the ‘Blob’? Tory ministers in the last government would often complain about their plans being frustrated by unelected officials – from high-ranking civil servants to government lawyers to the bureaucrats and regulators who populate Britain’s vast array of arms-length bodies. Yet, just like the culture war, leading figures in the ruling Labour Party tend to claim that the Blob is a myth or an invention of the right.
In truth, not only is the Blob real, but it is also getting considerably more powerful under Keir Starmer’s leadership.
Much of the Blob in Britain resides in what are called quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations)... These are arms-length bodies, made up of unelected appointees, who oversee certain economic sectors or policy briefs. Although it was only elected in July, the new Labour government has already set up a vast array of new quangos... At the last count, before Starmer set up his own quangos, the Cabinet Office oversaw nearly 300 such bodies, which spent a colossal £265 billion a year and employed about 300,000 people...
...These bodies have a few notable features in common... any top member of a quango usually tries to hold down posts at several others...Life is good for the full-time Blobbers... The number of civil servants on six-figure salaries has risen by 40 per cent in the past year... The Blob tends to fill its ranks from the elite classes... It is dedicated less to public service than self-preservation, which is achieved primarily through avoiding democratic accountability...
...Unelected, underqualified and overpaid, the Blob needs to be challenged if we are to have efficient public services and an effective state. Yet the new Labour government seems intent on doing the opposite. It wants to cosy up to and empower the quangocrats. The ‘change’ Starmer promised to the voters will not come any time soon."