Reform UK would seize control of civil servants just like Trump in US, says Kruger – UK politics live | Politics
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/oct/28/labour-asylum-seekers-military-sites-keir-starmer-rachel-reeves-reform-uk-yvette-cooper-uk-politics-live-news-latest-updates?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-6900b7378f0834dc8678f935#block-6900b7378f0834dc8678f935
Posted by JackStrawWitchita
19 Comments
Wouldn’t want to be at the start of your civil service career about now.
>He said that there were five big office buildings in Westminster housing government offices that together cost £100m a year to rent. Those leases were coming up for renewal before the next parliament. Reform would not renew them, he said.
And yet Reform are dead against any Civil Servant working from home or hybrid working ever. So where are those people going to go?
>The whole the DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion]/woke agenda that has infected so much of Whitehall will be in contravention of the civil service code that we introduce. Socially controversial political positions will not be acceptable in the civil service.
Ok so you get rid of 30 people out of the thousands of CS that wont have an office due to you not renewing the building leases. What about the rest?
Good. Here’s a quote from Gus O’Donnell, *the* former Civil Servant:
> When I was at the Treasury, I argued for the most open door possible to immigration…. I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare, not national welfare.
In his book *Beyond Britannia*, Simon McDonald, former head of the Diplomatic service, argued that we shouldn’t get involved in space exploration, dismissing it as ‘Imperial fantasies’. He also argues that we should give up the independent nuclear deterrent, give up our seat on the UN Security Council, and, based on his pro-EU stance and his argument that EU states should surrender their diplomatic apparatus the EU, also believes Britain should give up any notion of an independent foreign policy
Rory Stewart, hardly a figure of the right, writes about his interaction with the Civil Service when he was trying to stop Jihadi groups in Syria receiving funding from the British government. They refused to tell him which figures he needed to talk to, edited letters he wrote to the PM about the issue, and generally refused to work with him.
There are clearly major issues with the Civil Service. They need to be reminded what their purpose is.
Edit: if you want to read further into McDonald’s work, he has a lot to say about soft power. He identifies the Civil Service is a great source of soft power (no bias I’m sure). He also argues that about elements of the media. In particular he identifies the Financial Times, the Economist, and the Guardian. Now, I’m happy to concede that the first two are generally widely respected and read. But the Guardian? Really? It’s here you realise the biases.
Civil servants already do what ministers request. They’ll generally only push back when what is being asked is illegal or similar.
Which tells you all you need to know about what Reform have in mind.
As usual if you do any kind of little bit of research this is gone so well for the yanks that they’ve had to re-hire so many of those Musk’s DOGE firings so yes lets emulate it.
Brexit was the biggest driver behind civil service increases as we staffed up for everything from customs to product safety regulations. Yet the same people who gave us Brexit claim they can reduce the number of people in government
>”Farage wanted to fill about half his cabinet with experienced outsiders who did not have seats in the Commons or the Lords.”
So the primary policymakers and decision-makers would be entirely removed from any form of democratic accountability?!?!?
>”That is not because we don’t have confidence in our [candidates to be MPs].”
Lmao
They’re not even subtle about cribbing Trumps from Playbook.
It’s worked out disastrously for the US, and has done massive damage to the ability of the state to actually function. The CDC is a shadow of its former self, so the US is now much more vulnerable to pandemics, and there are going to be huge gaps in public health data. Similarly the damage done to the NOAA means they’re now much more vulnerable to extreme weather events.
The cuts programme barely saved any money either. Partly because they had to hire back a bunch of people back at premiums because the state couldn’t function without them.
They’ve also been replacing state employees with Trump loyalists to try to set the stage for an illegal third term. Literally borrowing the Nazi strategy of “Gleichschaltung” (“coordination”) which Hitler used to take full control of the state.
Like Trump, Farage’s goal is to burn down the UK as a prelude to introducing a kleptocracy in the form of Putin’s Russia and other deeply corrupt autocracies. Destroying the civil service, and our human rights, is only the first step.
There are areas that the government has expanded into such as media and sport that could be shutdown wholesale. The problem with the UK system is that the government can create, rename and repurpose departments without any reference to Parliament.
If the concern is excessive concentrations of power, then break up the Home Office for starters.
Future historians (assuming there will be future historians) will think it’s absolutely mental that, country by country, the west fell for this global cabal of far right grifters.
“How didn’t they see this coming?” They’ll say…
And within 100 years after it last happened. We’re so stupid.
Hope they are going to put the other croocks in Westminster behind bars too
Not long now just a few years left
The writing is on the wall. Farage is in America every other month to take notes.
He has a prepared blueprint from the Americans, and is coasting off of the illusion that he has “massive public support” to directly import MAGA into the UK.
In effect, to turn the UK into another Trump’s America.
It’s an attempted power grab whilst they’re still riding high in the polls, and nothing else. I dunno about you all, but I don’t want MAGA politics here.
This is bad news, especially with their desire to remove the “adherence to international law” bit + scrap the Human Rights Act.
Just like the trump regime is doing in the US, Nigel Farage and Reform want to remove civil servants who act according to long-established regulations and norms and are promoted according to their merit and experience, and replace them with rabid partisans who will act according to the whims of party leadership and are promoted according to their party loyalty.
Just like the trump regime in the US, Nigel Farage and Reform want to replace the rule of law — rules that are enforced evenhandedly regardless of one’s party — with the rule of men, where one’s standing with the party in power determines whether the bureaucracy will help them or hinder them. They want to go back to a royal court, with the Prime Minister as the ruler and his party as the courtiers. Make friends in the PM’s court and the government will bend over backwards to help you; make enemies in the court and they’ll do everything in their power to make your life worse.
And since the UK’s government has functions that the US federal government has delegated to the states — on things like voting, drivers’ licences, business licencing, professional licencing, etc. — that means that those the government has decided are out of its favor (by having the wrong skin color, religion, political opinions, or immigration status, or just personally being someone they find too “woke”) can be effectively shut out of the economy and culture.
What does that even mean? These guys have already shown they have no clue about local government so no surprise they know nothing about national government either.
It is genuinely baffling to me this stuff has been openly stated Reform policy since their Manifesto last year, and its taken a solid 12+ months for any notable media coverage of the fact that Reform’s policies outside of (but also including) immigration are ***fucking insane***.
Can we also discuss the “Free Speech Bill” where the very next line stating what this bill will do is “legislate to censor left wing bias”?
Good luck with the constant strikes, I’m looking forward to being on the picket line.
This country works nothing like the US, the sooner people understand that, the better they’ll be
And isn’t it strange that the right are all about free speech unless it comes from people that doesn’t agree with them. Then they are called the radical left wing. It’s just an excuse for the right to be racist and claim it’s only free speech