The United Kingdom doesn’t lack capable people in politics, but something is clearly very broken, and we need to do something, quickly!
If any organisation changed its senior leadership every few months, relied on generalists to manage specialist portfolios and judged success by headlines rather than outcomes, results would not be good, and shareholders would intervene.
Yet that’s exactly how we run government, and that is what we are getting.
Just to be clear before I continue, this isn’t about party or ideology; at present, all the options appear equally limited. It’s about why we don’t seem to expect the same professionalism from those who lead our country as we do from those who lead our businesses, charities and public institutions.
Governance isn’t glamorous
Corporate boards are far from perfect, but they are built for continuity, oversight and balance. They combine financial literacy, operational experience and human leadership and have people who challenge decisions, bring different perspectives and are appointed for their expertise, not their popularity.
It isn’t a flawless system, boardrooms fail after all, but it’s still far better suited to manage complex organisations than politics currently is. Businesses at least start with qualified people, measurable outcomes and a diversity of backgrounds, experience, skills and thought.
Government, by contrast, rarely applies the same discipline.
Ministers arrive with limited relevant experience and minimal preparation. Civil servants spend months retraining them and then the cycle repeats. There’s little formal assessment of capability and no equivalent of a board’s nominations or committees to test appointments.
Competence before confidence
Whilst the Chancellor doesn’t have to be an economist, we should probably expect that they grasp how fiscal policy links to productivity and investment. We should require our Health Secretary to understand large-scale operations and workforce management and find a Defence Secretary as fluent in procurement and logistics as they are in patriotism.
How can a Prime Minister do that when the maximum available talent pool is a total of 650 MPs, many of whom are in opposition parties and therefore not really an option, and a few of the 800 peers who would be willing to serve?
Even our current PM, with his now slightly reduced but substantial majority of 399 Labour MPs, isn’t exactly spoiled for choice. Imagine a company forced to appoint its entire executive team internally with no option to look elsewhere?
Especially when one considers that those MPs are not really selected for their competence but by local party associations, often dominated by small, ageing groups, who choose candidates based on loyalty, service and media performance.
The irony is obvious, the skills needed to become a politician are often oxymoronic to those required to be an effective one. Politics rewards charisma, factional loyalty and message discipline, whereas governance demands judgment, patience and technical understanding.
The two seldom coexist.
Perhaps it is time to consider alternatives, such as secondments, fixed-term appointments or non-partisan technocratic posts. Continuity of expertise shouldn’t weaken democracy after all, it should strengthen it.
Training is a necessity, not a luxury
Every successful organisation invests in leadership development before promotion and the Government should be no different.
We should consider creating a training programme, with input from experienced politicians, academics, industry and other relevant parties, perhaps selecting at a global level, to help to professionalise our political leadership with a serious, mandatory ministerial programme.
It should cover economics and budgeting, procurement and contract law, HR, negotiation, national security, crisis management and ethical decision-making as a minimum. The goal isn’t to create technocrats but to give ministers a grounding in the responsibilities they hold.
Think of it as FIFA coaching badges for politics. You can’t manage a football team without one, so why are we handing departments with multi-billion-pound budgets to people who’ve never studied governance, finance or management?
Competence isn’t partisan, it’s public protection.
The tail shouldn’t be wagging the dog…
According to the Office for National Statistics, the UK Civil Service employed around 550,000 people as of March 2025, up from roughly 400,000 in 2016, a 34 per cent increase in less than a decade.
Why?
One must assume this is compensating for the lack of experience of ministers, combining with complex portfolios and political instability. Effectively, the machine expands to fill the gap, but it hardly provides us with the much-discussed and prized democracy we seek. It’s providing us with blurred accountability, slower decisions and a culture of risk-aversion by those creating rather than executing policy or political direction.
Is it too much to believe that a stronger, more experienced and trained ministerial class, acting like a director of a company would let the Civil Service focus on delivery rather than direction. It’s not about shrinking the state but about restoring checks and balances and putting democracy back in charge.
Let’s do something differently…
So what should change?
First, accept that training in politics is a necessity, not a luxury. Second, widen the talent pipeline so that expertise counts alongside electability. Third, clarify the relationship between ministers and civil servants so both can do their jobs effectively.
Boardrooms are imperfect, but at the very least, they provide structure, including oversight, debate, accountability and succession that politics desperately lacks. We can’t keep treating the management of a £2 trillion economy as an entry-level job.
The evidence is clear that skilled, experienced, diverse and balanced teams deliver better outcomes. Whether through better people, better preparation or better structures, probably all three, we must raise the standard of political competence.
A final plea, “The Blame Window”
Can we agree on a twelve-month limit for blaming the other side? One year to explain what you inherited, then move on. Because the current situation of constantly going round and round blaming each other is ridiculous, boring and does nothing to solve the problems we face, which continue to mount as the playground slanging matches continue.
Our political leaders must be better at coping with this increasingly fast-paced, uncertain and complicated world. But we must give them a team and structure to do that, and we, the electorate, must play our part by expecting the same competence, balance and teamwork that we demand everywhere else.
After all, in the end, every citizen is a shareholder in this enterprise, and it’s time we demanded better management.
