#216 – Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can't get anything done – and how to fix it
When you have a system where ministers almost never understand their portfolios, civil servants change jobs every few months, and MPs don’t grasp parliamentary procedure even after decades in office — is the problem the people, or the structure they work in?
Today’s guest, political journalist Ian Dunt, studies the systemic reasons governments succeed and fail.
And in his book How Westminster Works …and Why It Doesn’t, he argues that Britain’s government dysfunction and multi-decade failure to solve its key problems stems primarily from bad incentives and bad processes. Even brilliant, well-intentioned people are set up to fail by a long list of institutional absurdities.
For instance:
- Ministerial appointments in complex areas like health or defence typically go to whoever can best shore up the prime minister’s support within their own party and prevent a leadership challenge, rather than people who have any experience at all with the area.
- On average, ministers are removed after just two years, so the few who manage to learn their brief are typically gone just as they’re becoming effective. In the middle of a housing crisis, Britain went through 25 housing ministers in 25 years.
- Ministers are expected to make some of their most difficult decisions by reading paper memos out of a ‘red box’ while exhausted, at home, after dinner.
- Tradition demands that the country be run from a cramped Georgian townhouse: 10 Downing Street. Few staff fit and teams are split across multiple floors. Meanwhile, the country’s most powerful leaders vie to control the flow of information to and from the prime minister via ‘professionalised loitering’ outside their office.
- Civil servants are paid too little to retain those with technical skills, who can earn several times as much in the private sector. For those who do want to stay, the only way to get promoted is to move departments — abandoning any area-specific knowledge they’ve accumulated.
- As a result, senior civil servants handling complex policy areas have a median time in role as low as 11 months. Turnover in the Treasury has regularly been 25% annually — comparable to a McDonald’s restaurant.
- MPs are chosen by local party members overwhelmingly on the basis of being ‘loyal party people,’ while the question of whether they are good at understanding or scrutinising legislation (their supposed constitutional role) simply never comes up.
The end result is that very few of the most powerful people in British politics have much idea what they’re actually doing. As Ian puts it, the country is at best run by a cadre of “amateur generalists.”
While some of these are unique British failings, many others are recurring features of governments around the world, and similar dynamics can arise in large corporations as well.
But as Ian also lays out, most of these absurdities have natural solutions, and in every case some countries have found structural solutions that help ensure decisions are made by the right people, with the information they need, and that success is rewarded.
This episode was originally recorded on January 30, 2025.
Video editing: Simon Monsour
Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Music: Ben Cordell
Camera operator: Jeremy Chevillotte
Transcriptions and web: Katy Moore
