You have to ask: is Keir Starmer the best Tory in contemporary politics? Is he not just the heir to Blair (minus the charisma) but to Margaret Thatcher? And is his Irish Svengali, Morgan McSweeney, channelling Dominic Cummings? Only today the PM has abolished NHS England, pretty well the quintessential quango, declaring: “I don’t see why decisions about £200 billion of taxpayer money for something as fundamental to our security as the NHS should be taken by an arms-length body, NHS England”. It looks like a return to the NHS reforms instituted by Andrew Lansley – yes, a Tory.
Further, can you imagine any Tory leader from Cameron to Sunak doing what the PM announced today… getting to grips with the Blob? Michael Gove tried and failed. Other Tories simply presided over an ever expanding civil service. As Sir Keir writes in the Daily Telegraph – note, the house journal of the Tory party – today, “the Civil Service has grown by 130,000 since the referendum and yet frontline services have not improved”. He is accordingly announcing a target to cut the administrative costs of regulation by a quarter.
