This week in Brexitland, April 11, 2024
Examining the British “deep state” and what that concept really tells us about anything
Last month, when Liz Truss appeared at CPAC, an American hard right political conference, she had this to say:
“What has happened in Britain over the past 30 years is power that used to be in the hands of politicians has been moved to quangos and bureaucrats and lawyers so what you find is a democratically elected government actually unable to enact policies.”
When asked what a “quango” was, as this term is not known to Americans, she continued:
“A quango is a quasi non-governmental organisation. In America you call it the administrative state or the deep state. But we have more than 500 of these quangos in Britain and they run everything.”
And suddenly here, out of the blue seemingly, we had a very recent, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, indulging in American deep state conspiracy theories. This is an unfortunate ideology that the alt-right in the States has expanded upon massively over the last few years. What I want to examine here is whether the idea of a “deep state” has any validity in the UK and further, talk about how someone like Liz Truss is in fact a creation of the deep state, if one can be said to exist in the United Kingdom, whether she is aware of that or not.
First of all, to explain the deep state idea as it pertains to America. It is essentially something that has long been there in US politics, given new life and conspiratorial underpinnings by Donald Trump. It is the tension between the notion of the United States as one nation, with a strong federal government tying it all together, or the idea of it as a collection of separate states, with the federal government existing simply for defence and money printing purposes.
Like most of American politics, this all makes zero sense when you take the same concept and foist it into the middle of British politics. The size and reach of our civil service has a lot to do with Britain having had an Empire - and given one of the things Brexit was supposed to be about was taking things out of the hands of Brussels and bringing them back to Whitehall, Brexit implies a larger civil service - which is also what leaving the EU has delivered in practice.
Which brings us to this pertinent question: what exactly is the right’s vision for a post-Brexit Britain? Is it a revitalised Anglosphere, with Britain taking a leading role? Adjacent to this, a Commonwealth that strengthens its connectivity through greater trading ties amongst member states? All of that would require more of a deep state, a greater number of civil servants to pull it off. It is the very opposite of the libertarian anarchy being called for by large sections of the British right. Given this paradox, it’s baffling even trying to figure out what it is the right actually wants now, what sort of Britain they wish to create. No wonder the civil servants can’t seem to deliver on this utopia they crave when they cannot define it themselves.
Yet we haven’t even got to the crux of the matter, which is this: if there is anyone in Britain that I can think of who has benefitted from anything remotely like a “deep state” in Britain over the last decade, it is Liz Truss herself. And that, maybe more than anything else, demonstrates how flawed the thinking of the new right in Britain is at present.
In 2008, Truss became the Deputy Director of Reform, a Westminster think tank - aka one of those NGO things that she lambasted last month in America for being part of the deep state. This role was pivotal to her becoming an MP - thus, if NGOs are a part of the deep state, the deep state was what opened the door for her to everything that followed, all the way to Downing Street.
Truss’ career in government was defined by her skipping from brief to brief, not really distinguishing herself in a positive way in any of them. To a large extent, this is not completely her fault - the cabinet has been musical chairs for some time now, with people being moved around a ridiculous amount. Still, her time as DEFRA Secretary was defined more than anything else by her terrible speech at 2014 Tory conference - you know the one, where she goes on about apples and cheese for ages before delivering the “pork markets” meme. Before that, when she was a minister in the Department for Education, she seemed confused about how many people it actually takes to run a nursery; much later on, her time as International Trade Secretary is largely remembered for a much criticised trade deal with Australia, one that even members of her own parliamentary party have lambasted as being terrible for Britain.
And yet, she made it all the way to Number 10. How? By leaning pretty heavily on the deep state she seems to now blame for her downfall. The basic competency of the civil service covers for even the most inept of ministers and Secretaries of State. If we stripped away the “deep state” in Britain, there would be nowhere for certain members of the government to hide any longer.
That brings us to the real point here: how was Brexit supposed to change Great Britain in a positive way? Almost eight years on from the referendum, no one seems to have a cogent answer to that question yet. Mostly because they don’t know what kind of Britain they want to live in.
Thank you for reading. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do, and I’ll be back next week with the worst of Brexit.
I’m not an academic ‘commenter’ on such subjects, but I am intrigued by what this political animal Liz Truss says, when and to whom.
It’s as if she’s been given an agenda - and even a script - when she ‘speaks’. She’s so wrong, at so many levels. In my humble opinion of course.
The ‘Trumpian’ influence is interesting in itself. Her focus on ‘Deep State’ is an indicator but her definition is somewhat off-beam.
Her concern about excessive government could be a genuine one of course, but her reasons don’t stack up.
One could argue that if we had MORE talented and performance-driven civil servants in strategic roles, we could enable the country to implement long-term strategies that have a greater chance of success, and also prevent nutcases getting into positions of Government and acting in a totally illogical or irresponsible manner.
I’m for fewer ‘elected MPs’ and stronger government. Might sound a tad ‘lefty’ to her and her conspirators, but I’m actually speaking as a right-centre, tech business owner.
I still don’t think she knows what she’s doing, but I think someone else knows what they WANT her to do.
You could argue that there is a deep state, actually much of the establishment, disparate elements little changing and with their own interests. Top civil servants, heads of quangos, heads of the armed forces and security forces, Director Generals of regulators and so on. In a former life I worked in some of these bodies. But they are not a conspiracy, pulling the strings together behind a curtain to achieve some dastardly outcome that subverts government or the people's will.
If anyone confronts you with a conspiracy theory, ask them where the evil participants meet and how do they communicate?
What is even more ludicrous is that this supposed deep state is working together to defeat right wing neoliberalism, of which Truss is a true believer, regardless of fact or experience, blindly removed from any exposure to scrutiny or expertise. Truss goes further by roping into her Deep State thesis, private sector Financial Traders located anywhere in the world. The kind of people who have made huge sums out of betting for and against currencies within free markets, a group of people who overwhelmingly vote for free market right wing and conservative parties around the world.
Truss's imagined conspiracy of wicked powerful. people working behind the scenes against her, runs counter to the way neoliberal ideas have seeped in deep into the top of the Civil Service, into heads of quangos, regulators and agencies. They also underpin the work of financial market traders and provide the bedrock of economics thinking of all opposition parties, now that Corbyn's Bennisms are defeated.
Truss's conspiracy might just about stand up in a conference of right wing nut jobs in American La La Land but topple over on exposure to fresh air. Her £100k+ p.a as ex PM for "research" purposes will ensure that we will hear a lot more of this guff.
Neoliberalism had it's peak in terms of globalisation in 2019. The Pandemic set that into reverse. The Ukraine war and sanctions further halted it and Biden's Inflation Reduction Act is a protectionist measure, to invest in American companies to develop domestic production, technology, green stuff and energy, re-shoring work from Asia in vast amounts. Biden has definitively said no to a UK USA trade deal. This also looks effectively impossible with China and India. Meantime, USA and UK have shrunk their navy's and are no longer able to police the world to enable safe trading everywhere. They cannot seem to stop Syria's attacks on shipping or small scale pirates, so sea freight is having to go via long, expensive re-routing. Big tech is replacing traditional capitalism with incredibly profitable rentier platforms that take off most of the cream, while the old Corporations lose out.
Will our neoliberal deep state establishment adapt to the changes or just plough on offering more bad governance? This was the absolutely perfect time to create maximum damage from Brexit, within about 1 month. You couldn't make it up. An incompetent, rushed attempt to break free from Europe to chase globalisation of trade that is rapidly going into reverse, whatever nonsense Truss speaks.