On Tuesday 28th January 2025, Politics in Pubs Manchester met at The Welcome Inn to discuss the role of government.  We were delighted to welcome our speaker, Sebastian Moore.  In last summer’s General Election, Sebastian stood as a candidate for the SDP party and had many a conversation about the role of government while on the campaign trail in Manchester Central.  Sebastian is now the National Organiser for the SDP, a party he describes as being ‘the sensible party on the left’.  We also welcomed Ben Elks from the Tax Payers Alliance, who will be leading February’s Politics in Pubs discussion https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/benjamin_elks.

Introduction

On the About page of the Politics in Pubs website, it says:

“We want to live in a successful, independent Britain that:

• meets the needs of its people
• provides its people a say in the laws that govern their lives
• allows its people to be involved in planning for the future
• invests in the people of this country, developing the skills we need to be more self-sufficient as a nation”

Sebastian started by asking Politics in Pubs to imagine a future where we live in such a Britain. What would its government look like?  What would its role be?  What should it do?  And what should it not do?  Should it be a big ‘Nanny’ state controlling how we live our daily lives?  Or a small ‘Nightwatchman’ state whose only responsibility is to uphold law, leaving its people with minimum interference from the government, and able to express their priorities and preferences via free trade?

The Role of Government

The free market reflects and communicates human priorities and preferences in record time, through competition and vying for custom.  It naturally cherry-picks the most profitable areas.  However, when it comes to providing essential infrastructure (like housing, energy, water, transport and communications) and public services (like education and healthcare)  Sebastian believes a more strategic, knowledgeable, informed approach is required.  Assessing the population’s infrastructure and service requirements enables provision to be prioritised and tailored according to need rather than profit, resulting in better decision-making which, in theory, improves people’s lives.  In Sebastian’s opinion, this should be the role of government.

QUANGOs

Sebastian is a democrat, believing that we, as a nation and a people, are capable of deciding what is in our best interests, and that a democratically elected government should deliver for the people what the free market cannot.  Before asking Politics in Pubs to consider what the government should – and should not – deliver, Sebastian introduced us to QUANGOs.

Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations are ‘arm’s length bodies’ which play a role in government decision-making while remaining separate from ministers.  They are usually funded with taxpayers’ money.  There are three types:  Non-Ministerial Government Departments (e.g. HMRC, ONS, Food Standards Agency), Executive Agencies (e.g. DVLA, HM Prison and Probation Service, Met Office) and Non-Departmental Public Bodies which advise ministers or carry out executive or regulatory functions (e.g. CQC, EHRC, Pensions Regulator).

Government decision-making has been contracted out to QUANGOs since the 1970s.  Since being elected in July 2024, this government has set up at least 25 QUANGOs.  It is difficult to find accurate information on how many now exist, but they run into the hundreds:

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/government-war-quangos

For years, the TaxPayers’ Alliance has been calling for a bonfire of quangos which it argues are a waste of taxpayers’ money, lack transparency and have a detrimental impact on our public policy. This extends to international QUANGOs too, which received £85 billion from the UK government between 2009 to 2021, many of whom politicians have given up power to on key policy areas like energy and health.

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/will_quangocrats_be_the_real_winners_of_this_election

Sebastian tested our knowledge of QUANGOs with an entertaining quiz before leaving us with the following thoughts:  What do QUANGOs do, why do they exist and how do they affect the role of government?  Are they further evidence of our elected representatives outsourcing government responsibility to unelected officials?  Finally, what should government do and what should it not do?

What should government do?

Politics in Pubs suggested the following:

• run prisons, armed forces, police and justice
• provide all critical infrastructure including the production of steel
• deliver its manifesto
• provide leadership with honesty and integrity
• put its own people first – e.g. their safety, jobs, standard of living
• conduct itself as a management company only
• be tiny
• create beautiful civic buildings with the classical architecture favoured by the public
• maintain a dedicated infrastructure workforce to prevent spiralling costs through a lack of domestic expertise
• ensure secure borders
• administer citizenship
• maintain the Land Registry as a record of property rights
• provide education
• deliver healthcare
• create a balanced framework to enable strategic industry to prosper while serving Britain’s needs
• provide vision, determination and drive in order to deliver what the people voted for.

What should government not do?

Politics in Pubs suggested:

• fund art
• expose itself to bribery and lobbying
• entertain draft legislation like the Climate and Nature Bill which appears cuddly and green on the surface but is, in fact, a huge threat to our way of life and was not voted for in the election
• spend taxpayers’ money on anything but essential British infrastructure and services
• hold frequent referenda which require too much research
• maintain any QUANGOs which waste a single second of their taxpayer-funded time on DEI policies or non-crime hate incidents
• record non-crime hate incidents – ever
• attack alternative provision like private education and home schooling
• deliver things which the people haven’t voted for e.g. Net Zero, DEI, mass immigration
• block accountability to the electorate via devolution, metro mayors, cancelling local elections etc
• turn major delivery and access routes like Deansgate into unwanted, under-utilised cycle lanes
• alienate its young men from the political middle ground:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/study-gen-z-dictatorship-channel-four-b1207319.html

Discussion

• Where the government is responsible for public services but chooses to ‘outsource’ them to the free market, waste is created by the artificial absence of competition during the life of the contract, the extraction of profit, and the need for regulation.
• QUANGOs can be corrupted too e.g. the ONS published questionable stats about Covid in support of government messaging.
• President Trump’s shake-up of the US will benefit the UK by tackling the long march of the left through its public institutions, challenging crony capitalism, and improving democratic accountability.
• Current political structures are designed to remove agency from the working class and give it to capitalists via ‘lobbying’, which suits self-serving politicians.  Follow the money.
• What is government?  There are various combinations of structures, systems and mechanisms for providing essential services.  It doesn’t really matter whether they are run by the public sector or the private sector if they are both unaccountable to the people.  Heads they win, tales we lose.
• Government is currently too complicated, too intrusive, too expensive, too wasteful and we are paying for it all.  We should design a much simpler government for Britain, starting again with a blank sheet of paper, including only functions which improve, protect or enable the lives of its people.
• People have lost faith in politicians and in their own agency to change the world.  We need to reinvigorate that sense of agency.  Start small by doing something in your community to inspire others that they can change things for the better.
• The British system of democracy is an illusion – our elected representatives don’t serve the people, they do what they like.  We should adopt the system of demarchy – randomly picking people from the electoral register (like the jury system) to participate in government and opinion polling rather than leaving it all to the men in suits.  https://constitution.org/1-Activism/elec/89demarchy.html

Thank you Sebastian, for leading the discussion.  Thank you Ben, for joining us all the way from Kent.  Thanks also to our wonderful hosts at The Welcome Inn. Cheers all!