THE TELEGRAPH: Anyone familiar with the way government used to operate a century ago cannot but be struck by the disparity with the way in which it operates now. Then, governments were small entities of a dozen or so cabinet ministers, matched by similar numbers of under-secretaries and ministers of state outside the cabinet. An empire on which the sun never set was ruled by roughly the same number of civil servants as are now to be found in the average department of state.
Now, about a third of the governing party in the House of Commons will have a salaried or unsalaried post that binds each individual to the collective line. There are nearly two dozen ministers in the cabinet. The civil service numbers well over half a million. Why has all this happened?
It has happened because, in short, governments now choose to do something that governments then sought to avoid as far as possible. They intervene. Indeed, it often seems that their raison d’etre is not merely as it once was - to do the minimum necessary to maintain a civilised polity - but to do the maximum possible and to put the proverbial finger in every pie. Small used to be beautiful. It isn’t now. In government, small used to be beautiful >>> By Simon Heffer
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
