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Downing Street only has itself to blame for failing to exercise power,
Whitehall experts have said, after a former No 10 adviser said that lobbying by a “political perma-class” had distracted the government from voters’ priorities.
Paul Ovenden prompted a debate about how Keir Starmer’s administration is governing after criticising what he described as the “sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time”.
In particular, the former Downing Street strategist highlighted the effort spent on freeing the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who has previously posted on X about killing Zionists, saying colleagues had joked about the campaign as a “totem of the ceaseless sapping of time and energy by people obsessed with fringe issues”.
Ovenden hit out at what he called the “supremacy of the stakeholder state”, arguing the government had been hobbled by a “complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations”, although he stressed that many civil servants themselves wanted to change the system.
He claimed the stakeholder state was “incubated by a political perma-class that exists within every party and every department – one whose entire focus is on preserving their status within a system that gives them meaning”. Ovenden said the solution was a “government with a stiffened spine and renewed purpose” that could dismantle much of the system quickly and find its nerve again.
Ovenden’s analysis is shared by many in Downing Street, including the prime minister, who complained last month: “Every time I go to pull a lever there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, [and] arm’s-length bodies that mean that the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be.”
However, a number of figures with expertise in government said ministers ultimately remained in charge and already had the power to change the system they complained about.
Alex Thomas, the programme director at the Institute for Government, said: “I don’t think he’s wrong on it being hard to get stuff done, but am not sure the ‘stakeholder’ framing is helpful.
“Government should be talking to people … and we know what the problems with government are – a weak centre in a highly centralised state, a lack of expertise because of political and civil service churn, and poor performance management. What’s needed to address those is sustained focus and political agency.”
Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA, the senior civil servants’ union, said the prime minister and his team had the ability to change the system if they wanted to, and Ovenden’s diagnosis of “conflicting power bases” was a “reasonable analysis”.
He said: “If you think that’s got to change, it’s only there because ministers put it there in the first place. The civil service didn’t put it there. And it can only change if there’s strong political will to change it.”
A former Labour adviser and aide to Tony Blair, John McTernan, said ministers had to bear responsibility for the government’s current position.
He said: “The biggest errors this government has made – including cutting winter fuel payments, trying to cut disability payments and refusing to cut the two-child benefit cap until recently – have been made by No 10 in conjunction with the Treasury.
“This is a government that is always getting its own way but is always looking for someone else to blame for the consequences of its own actions.”
Another former Labour adviser, Tom Baldwin, Starmer’s biographer, said it was right for the government to focus on issues important to voters at a time when delivering change was “grindingly difficult”, but reforming Whitehall risked becoming a distraction.
He said: “Although almost everyone says Whitehall’s often sclerotic machinery can be improved, I’m pretty sure the PM wants to start the new year by talking about issues that really matter to the public like living standards, public services, immigration and the intensely dangerous situation abroad.
“Banging on about Whitehall quangos or red tape would be yet another distraction or even risk creating the impression that you’re just making excuses.”
The government declined to comment on Ovenden’s intervention, his first public remarks since resigning in September after it emerged he had sent inappropriate messages about the Labour MP Diane Abbott eight years earlier.
As one of a handful of advisers close to Starmer since his days in opposition, Ovenden’s departure was widely regarded as a blow to the prime minister.
Ovenden said Abd el-Fattah’s case was one of several examples of the government becoming distracted from its main objectives, alongside rows over reparations for former colonies and banning smoking in pub gardens.
He said: “At a time when the public is getting more and more frustrated, more and more fed up with inaction, more and more fed up with distraction, in my opinion, we simply can’t afford to be spending their time on what I consider distractions.”
