Restore Britain must address the politicisation and protection of the Civil Service
Gordon Brown in his last days in office pushed the Constitutional Reform & Governance Act which protects the Civil Service so they can ignore anything a minister requests without risk of dismissal.
The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, passed in the final months of Gordon Brown’s Labour government, fundamentally altered the relationship between elected ministers and the civil service.
By placing the civil service on a statutory footing and embedding principles of merit-based appointment and political impartiality, the Act delegated day-to-day management including recruitment, appraisal, and dismissal, to senior civil servants themselves. Section 3 grants the Minister for the Civil Service power to manage the civil service and make appointments, yet in practice this authority is exercised through delegation to permanent secretaries and the Civil Service Commission. Ministers cannot directly hire or fire individual officials, disciplinary and dismissal processes remain internal to the civil service. Proponents at the time argued this protected against politicisation but the reality was it created a self perpetuating political bureaucracy insulated from democratic accountability.
This insulation has become a central obstacle to delivering the radical change sought by right leaning parties. Without the ability to align the permanent state with the will of the electorate, governments find their policies diluted, delayed, or quietly obstructed. For a party such as Restore Britain with a platform of mass deportations, tax cuts, regulatory slashing, and national restoration, overturning or substantially amending the 2010 Act is not optional but essential.
Rupert himself has repeatedly confronted civil servants in Public Accounts Committee hearings, declaring dysfunctional bodies “incapable,” highlighting “no accountability” over public funds, and stating plainly that underperforming officials should be sacked. Restore’s broader commitment to “burn down the regulatory frameworks that crush small businesses” and reduce the size of the state logically requires restructuring the bureaucracy that designs and enforces those very frameworks.
Empirical examples illustrate the problem.
On 14 February 2026 the official Cabinet Office X account (@cabinetofficeuk) posted: “This #valentinesday we are improving our relationship with the EU to benefit consumers ❤️ A new food and plant deal will make it easier and cheaper to buy 💐 for your loved one.”
Follow-up posts promoted Erasmus+ returns, SPS deals for Welsh and Scottish meat exports to the EU, and diplomatic-economic partnerships worth billions. These messages, issued under a Labour government pursuing a so called ‘reset’, are at odds with referendum result and subsequent Conservative attempts to honour Brexit. The UK Civil Service account (@UKCivilService) has similarly amplified content on “Diversity and Inclusion Award” winners, “leading with diversity,” net-zero training courses, and summer diversity internship programmes. A 2020 incident saw the same account briefly tweet criticism of the Johnson government as “arrogant and offensive… truth twisters” in reference to Dominic Cummings, later deleted but widely circulated. If you needed proof that the Civil Service is left wing and political then surely this is it.
Further instances of institutional left leaning activity appear in mainstream and online reporting. A 2018 VoxDev study found UK civil servants exhibited confirmation bias when interpreting data, tending to align findings with their ideological preferences. Telegraph investigations have highlighted left-wing bias across the establishment, including public-sector over-representation of “progressive activists” (defined as young, highly educated, socially left-wing individuals comprising roughly 8% of the population but disproportionately present in government, charities, and quangos). Civil servants have been instructed under “Resist framework” guidance to monitor social media for “high-risk narratives” critical of migration. Stonewall affiliations, extensive diversity-and-inclusion roles (once described by ministers as “a job creation scheme for the woke”), and bullying allegations disproportionately levelled at right-leaning ministers (Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Suella Braverman) have fuelled perceptions of a politicised culture operating against elected policy directions.
Senior civil servants have not escaped scrutiny. Recent appointments, such as Dame Antonia Romeo’s elevation to Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service in February 2026, have drawn comment for her close working relationships with Labour figures and past management style controversies, though these remain contested. Broader commentary points to a London centric, same schools homogeneity that produces group-think resistant to conservative priorities.
Right-leaning commentators have articulated the issue forcefully. Historian David Starkey has described an “erosion of state capacity” and deliberate positioning of the civil service to “resist what” elected governments attempt, framing it as part of a deeper subversion that traps future reform-minded administrations (including potential Reform or Restore Britain governments) in a “blob” of entrenched interests. Rupert Lowe’s parliamentary interventions demanding accountability for waste, labelling environment-agency oversight “dysfunctional,” and insisting non-performers must face dismissal embody the practical frustration.
Woke institutional capture across public bodies is rampant, including the civil service’s embrace of identity politics over delivery. These voices converge on a core diagnosis: the 2010 Act, intended as a bulwark against politicisation, has instead enabled a self-directed permanent state whose cultural leanings frequently diverge from the electorate’s expressed will.