Gardens have been sources of inspiration and pleasure to artists, statesmen and even the first humans to walk in Eden. Fragrant quotations from Roman Consuls to American founding fathers to Victorian poets adorn the webpages of every famous quotation website, exulting the vivifying and stimulating effects of a little patch of rus in urbe. 

It is fair to say that no such memorable words emerged from the Prime Minister yesterday morning. Sir Keir Starmer might as well have brought the weed killer out, for his speech was all about rooting out the rot in the British state and eradicating it.

Starmer understands at least one piece of political strategy — blame his predecessors and get all the bad news out of the way as early in his first administration as possible, hoping that things will, eventually, get better. He also understands, at least superficially, that nothing really works in Britain anymore, and that this may be a problem for the government he heads up, if he is to do anything meaningful with his time in office.

I really do wish him well in this regard, as should everyone else who has had the misfortune to deal with the British state in recent years. As a Briton, I want him to succeed in improving the country, and as someone who agrees that there is something rotten in the state, I would love for him to tackle it. (This is especially the case if in doing this he makes himself even more unpopular with the public than he already seems to be.)

My concern though, is that this new government fails to understand either the scale of the source of the sickness, and as a result they may make things even worse. 

It is obviously true that the Conservatives failed to grapple with many of the key structural flaws in Britain today. By talking tough, but acting pathetically, they certainly made the work of fundamental reform harder. Certainly, the Tories inherited a much worse economic situation in 2010 than Labour did this year. But they failed to heed the dictum of not letting a crisis go to waste. Instead, they fuelled many of the problems, making their criticisms (and my own) significantly blunter as a result.

What are these structural problems? Labour will tell you that it is all the incompetence and self-interest of Tory scum. This kind of cynical politicking is fair enough, and to be expected. That it is not entirely true, or at least not enough to matter, is beside the point. What is worrying is that it seems that many new ministers still think that it really is as simple a diagnosis as that — a Dunning-Kruger analysis that will prevent them from understanding what is really needed to be done.

the administrative state … is designed to prevent problems from being fixed

As someone who served as a special adviser in multiple government departments, I think the rot goes to the very heart of the structures of power in the UK. I tend to agree with another fan of the Downing Street garden, Dominic Cummings. His argument — with apologies for condensation — is thus: although the administrative state does contain some amazingly talented people, and does prevent dangerous ministers from doing dangerous things, it is designed to prevent problems from being fixed if those problems are important enough to come up to ministerial decision-making levels. It blocks the sorts of reforms to the delivery of services and modernisation of tech and practices (not to mention killings of sacred cows), that would actually enable problems to be solved.

As such, we are poorer, less safe, less organised and more vulnerable to the sorts of terrifying threats and changes that the 21st century will throw at us — all because of bureaucratic short-termism from the Treasury, a slavish devotion to process over outcomes, a tangle of judicial weeds, and an increase in DEI and other cultural nonsense imported from across the Atlantic. 

That’s why immigration hasn’t been dealt with, debt is piling up and growth has been non-existent since 2008. That’s why COVID was a fiasco until the state got out of the way and allowed people like Kate Bingham and Nadhim Zahawi to bring in private sector experience and skills, and why we can’t even have faith in our nuclear weapons deterrent. Instead, we have more QUANGOs, more regulation and more civil servants working, and yet the problems keep mounting up. 

This rot is indeed deep, and it has little to do with the sort of day-to-day scandals over which Westminster obsesses. Does Labour have a blueprint to sweep this away and replace it with a nimble, modern apparatus that is actually interested in fixing the problems that have made the state ungovernable, the economy unworkable, and the country increasingly unliveable?

The short answer is no. But neither do the Tories, and nor, despite the name, does Reform. Tinkering with various policies will end in failure. Trying to fudge various appointments by squeezing partisans into the existing structure, as the Labour government have been caught doing in recent weeks, is also just rearranging the seating equipment on top of an extended metaphor involving blocks of ice and large ships.

The penny will eventually drop that the system itself blocks the scale of reforms necessary. It is starting to fall when it comes to our military procurement, our health service and our immigration system. Some of the Tory leadership contenders, in particular Kemi Badenoch and Rob Jenrick, seem to be aware of this; Jenrick admits he was radicalised by the inability of the state to stop a few dinghies from crossing the channel. Perhaps Cummings’ own “start up party” will deliver the goods, or maybe Reform can live up to their promise. 

But Starmer still just about has a window of opportunity to be brave and fight against his programming. He could turn on the machine and clobber it with his majority. That would be a triumph of democratic politics over the growth of an unelected bureaucracy whose cloying hand has been the cause of such misery. And it’s the only way he will come out of the garden smelling of roses.