Incompetent and doomed: Privatisation has made a Dad's Army of the state

Kenan Malik

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“This government are behaving like they're political commentators. They've got to remember they have the levers of power and can actually do things,” Conservative MP for Epping Forest Neil Hudson told the Today programme last week.

Hudson was discussing the mistaken release from prison of Hadush Kebatu, the asylum seeker who had committed sexual assault while housed in the Bell Hotel in Epping. His comment would have been equally apt in response to any of the myriad woes that have embroiled the government in recent weeks, from the collapse of the Chinese spying court case to the furious resignation of victims from the national grooming gang inquiry.

In each case, catastrophic failures were shaped by specific circumstances, such as the chaotic prison system behind the accidental release of Kebatu. The failures, though, reflect also a broader problem of statecraft, one that began long before Keir Starmer entered No 10. It stems from the way the state has been reshaped in recent decades, transformed, in the fashionable jargon of political science, from a "command and control" structure to a "regulatory state".

"Command and control" was exemplified in the postwar decades in Britain, with successive governments undertaking detailed economic planning, nationalising many industries, establishing institutions such as the NHS, and intervening to pursue social and economic objectives.