What would DOGE UK look like?

Since Donald Trump was elected president again, the US has been undergoing a vast and rapid cost-cutting exercise. Much of this has been led by Elon Musk, who is heading up the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”, named after the internet meme).

DOGE’s first major move was to shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), reducing its workforce from 14,000 to 294. Although there were cries of this being terribly unfair, it is difficult for even the most hardened Lefty to justify some of the work USAID has funded. This included $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities” and $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru.

Events in the US have led many Brits to speculate about how our own taxes might have been misused, as well as suggest we need a “DOGE UK”. Currently, I am in the process of establishing such an organisation, having researched what I call “Woke Waste” for over a year. On my Substack I have documented tens of millions of pounds in taxpayer waste, and the parallels with the US are striking. Without further ado, here are some ideas for what DOGE UK should do:

For example, if you think USAID’s projects sound ghastly, you will be horrified by what the our own government-sponsored quango UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) spends money on. Many Brits will have never heard of it despite being charged £9 billion per year for its work. UKRI is responsible for handing out grants to universities, which it does through its nine subsidiaries — all dedicated to different academic areas. Not all of these are bad, of course, with the UKRI supporting important medical, scientific and technological research. It’s just that its value tends to be let down by its more fluffy wings, such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Economic and Social Research Council. Take the awarding of £668,244 in taxpayer-funded grants to a four-year study titled “Pregnant Men: An International Exploration of Trans Male Experiences and Practices of Reproduction”. Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Brits may be surprised at the number of charities they are charged for, many of which function as lobby groups

The AHRC is by far the most ridiculous subsidiary of the UKRI, with taxpayers charged £207 million for its work between 2022 and 25. Below are examples of the “research” it has funded, including active projects:

• The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000 – Birmingham City University (£841,830)
• Cuteness In Contemporary Environmental Culture: Developing Ecopoetic Practice (£120,766)
• Queerness in nineteenth-century transatlantic spiritualism (approx £20k per year — a Phd)
• In Our Own Words: Documenting Everyday Lives of Queer People in Central Asia (£34,611)
• (De)colonial Ecologies in 21st-century insular Hispanic Caribbean film (£205,543)
• Comics and Race in Latin America (£759,293)
• Decolonising the Museum: Digital Repatriation of the Gaidinliu Collection from the UK to India (DiMuse) (£805,769)
• Perverse Collections: Building Europe’s Queer and Trans Archives (£136,909)

Make no mistake — these are not anomalies but closely representative of AHRC research, which is why the quango should be completely cut.

With the AHRC splashing hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on essential research into gay porn and “cuteness” studies, you’d think we wouldn’t need any more humanities research in the UK. Shockingly, however, taxpayers were charged £296,193,050 (between 2020-24) for “The UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences”, aka The British Academy. With this it has funded projects such as “Plant trees, save Lahore”: afforestation as hope and political project in Pakistan (£370,589) and At the Cold War’s Margins: New Theory of Indian Women’s Pacifist Thought (£348,706).

Despite having “British” in the title, the Academy loves funding foreign students — awarding millions last year to international professors to study here, who were also offered “childcare support” and the ability to work in their “home institution overseas”. One international student heading to the UK received £196,350 for his project From queer ecology towards haunted aiesthesis: disorientation, care and futurities in the LGBTQIAPN+ artists’ moving image from the Brazilian Amazon.

Then let’s consider Arts Council England (ACE). ACE claims that it invests in “artists and organisations that make and develop exceptional, inspirational work for our communities”, but taxpayers may not be so convinced. Take Soho Theatre, which receives £614,582 in annual funding and last year held the Femmes of Colour Comedy Club where “White audience members are encouraged to check their privilege at the door”. Would white taxpayers be thrilled to learn that they are funding people to hector them?

Soho Theatre’s identity obsession is no anomaly, and might — partially, at least — be explained by ACE’s investment principles. Any artist or group wanting funding needs to show its commitment to diversity and environmentalism. Thus, they are essentially financially incentivised, with taxpayers money, to bake woke ideology into their art. This is an insult to the average Briton.

It is an insult — but it is hardly a unique one. Brits may be surprised at the number of charities they are charged for, many of which function as lobby groups. Such charities are explicitly political — and by “political” I mean left-leaning. These include the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which have received hundreds of thousands of pounds:

Institute for Public Policy Research	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	Totals
Income from government contracts	32,500	140,000	N/A	42,000	78,750	Pending	293,250
Income from government grants	70,000	12,500	12,250	N/A	N/A	Pending	94,750
						Final total	388,000
New Economics Foundation	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	Totals
Income from government contracts		123,140	5,00	46,690	71,380	63,830	305,040
Income from government grants		60,190	54,660	25,860	N/A	33,000	173,710
						Final total	478,750

The IPPR recently endorsed the idea that the UK should pay reparations, while the NEF wants to have a frequent flying levy in Europe and for Labour to introduce a new national wealth fund, among many other left-leaning ideas.

British taxpayers should not have to fund projects which are irrelevant to their lives — still less institutions which disrespect and undermine them. Change is needed.

To learn more about DOGE UK, readers can follow its account on X or subscribe to my Substack, which has nearly 200 articles on Woke Waste and the deep state.