Britain's Capacity for State Renewal Needs Refreshing

As decades of renewal go, this doesn’t feel like one for Britain yet. Most of the problems that Keir Starmer’s Labour government came into office promising to fix remain little changed: More asylum seekers are arriving in small boats, and even the home secretary says the country has lost control of its borders; prisons are full to bursting, and courts are backlogged; a target of building 1.5 million homes looks impossible; the economy is barely growing. Like its predecessor, Labour has found that when it pulls on the levers of power, not much happens.

When the policies of right and left prove equally impotent, it’s worth examining the machinery of government. There’s a strong case to argue that the source of Britain’s malaise is an erosion of state capacity — the basic ability of the system to get things done. This has been the subject of much study but most of it isn’t headline-grabbing. How to fix the system’s plumbing and wiring can be a dull and technical business. It’s nonetheless important: It doesn’t matter who’s pulling the levers if the pipes are leaking and the cables are eroded.