Our author draws on his own experience of the civil service to cast doubt on the government's reform plans

Swift’s horseracing readership will be well aware of that sinking feeling as the mass cavalry charge of the Grand National start results in your fancy falling at the first fence. There you sit, watching the rest of the field toil round for another long four-and-a-half miles, without any financial interest in the outcome. Not the same, is it?

Swift was reminded of this when he read about Labour’s – or specifically Pat McFadden’s - plans to reform the civil service announced this week.

Mr McFadden is a nice man. And there seemed, on the surface, to be a lot of good sense in the proposals. Performance-related pay would be extended. Poorer performers incentivised to leave. Performance reviews might result, after six months, in dismissals. Imagine that! Civil servants actually dismissed for poor performance!

Hasn’t happened since 1854 and the introduction of the ‘independent’ civil service under Messrs Northcote and Trevelyan. (Their report is very short and well-written, so Swift’s keener readers might care to find it online. Were it to be drafted today it would be ten times as long and littered with grammatical howlers and non sequiturs, judging by recent white papers Swift has had to read).

However, to return to the point, as soon as Swift noticed that Mr McFadden had specifically rejected the idea of firm manpower targets to which the bureaucracy would be tied (à la Thatcher), he sighed and shook his head. Labour's horse was on the floor at (literally) the first hurdle.

Dear readers, you might recall that Swift was once an official himself and he knows the way the system works.

First, civil servants have a lot of time to play (and gum up) the system, and ministers very little bandwidth to keep the reform process on track.

Second, there is always a reason why Juggins is vital and Muggins should be give more time to improve. Especially as this is being judged by Buggins who has known them both for years.

Third, as soon as this initiative falls off the front pages impetus is lost. There really is very little political advantage in promoting the idea of a smaller civil service, a lesson which applies particularly to Labour with its strong links to the civil service unions, which are powerful (a high rate of membership), vocal, and surprisingly militant given the general public impression of milquetoast bureaucrats who spend all their time on DEI initiatives and awaydays in luxe hotels.

An example: Swift remembers when he was still new to the machine being asked by his boss to identify possible savings that could be made on a particular training initiative. Away he went, and diligently came up with a plan.

It was gently then explained to him that the purpose of this exercise was not to identify and implement real savings. Oh no. It was to demonstrate that all and any reductions would result in the sky falling in, the collapse of the temples of the Gods, and mutterings in the Cabinet Office canteen. So he wrote that instead and we kept the money.

Swift’s suspicion about the current reform process hardened when he read an oleaginous letter under the name of Sir Keir Starmer (drafted, no doubt by a senior official or several, and co-signed by the head of the civil service), droning on about the selfless dedication of officialdom and how proud he was of their commitment (N.B. this is the second time Starmer has had to execute this reverse ferret; the first being his rapid retreat after claiming (quite accurately) that too many people in Whitehall are comfortable ‘in the tepid bath of managed decline’).

It is hardly Elon Musk’s DOGE, is it?

Allow Swift to doubt, dear readers, the credibility of  a reform programme that turns and runs at the first sign of opposition. There seems to be no conviction behind it, and thus no reason why reform should take place. But then, as Mike Tyson observed in a different context: ‘Everyone has a strategy until they get punched in the face’.

Civil Service 2, Starmer 0.

Here are three Swiftian recommendations for a future government (because the current lot won’t do it):

1. Set headcount targets for the civil service that through natural wastage plus redundancies which are inescapable and mandatory. By the middle of last year, the civil service had increased to 515,000 (it’s still about that). Before the Brexit referendum it was 384,000. In 1939 the number of what were then called non-industrial civil servants stood at 163,000. That might not be (sadly) achievable today, but there seems to be no reason why a target of 350,000 should not be reached in a year or so. And after that, who knows?
2. Drive productivity gains. Swift well remembers the stampede for the doors when Big Ben struck 5pm. Staying late to complete a project or a draft was regarded as an act of extraordinary and heroic selflessness. Civil servants will have to work harder and longer, simply because there will be fewer of them. If they don’t like it, follow the big green sign marked ‘Exit’ and drop your pass off at the door.
3. More special (and specialist) advisers. This is controversial, but Swift is convinced that ministers are hopelessly outgunned in terms of political advice and particularly long-term strategic thinking by the official blob. If we start to shed people from the latter, we can certainly afford a few more hires from outside the charmed circle of mandarins.

Like all very useful systemic reforms, this will not be easy or necessarily popular. But it is needed. Courage, mes enfants!