Danny Kruger and Antonia Romeo have more in common than they think

Danny Kruger, who is leading Reform UK’s preparation for government, has been publishing a series of articles on what he wants to do if the party gets into power. Those include plans to strengthen the centre of government and set a clear direction, and to focus on the capability of the civil service. 

A weak centre is no conspiracy

The Reform UK MP wants politicians to ‘take back control’. He thinks too many decisions in government are taken, framed or stymied by the administrative state, which in his view has expanded into areas that should more properly be in the realm of the politicians. 

Kruger’s diagnosis leans heavily on his view that civil servants have ended up serving a higher authority than the elected government of the day, and that this has been “twisted and abused to empower unelected officials”. Exhibit A for Kruger is cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo’s review of the civil service, and her personal objectives that – alongside plenty of uncontroversial aims – include acting “as a steward for the democratic system of government and guardian of the constitution”. It is this framing that Kruger dislikes. For him, no unelected civil servant should take such a role.

Kruger is right that the civil service is too gummed up, and that ministers are poorly served by the machine they oversee, and that this is especially true of the centre. But this is no conspiracy. It is more that, consciously or not, successive ministers and their officials have built a state where it is complex to wield power, and where there is insufficient clarity about the decisions that can be taken by ministers at the centre. 

It is a dispersion of power that frustrates governments, not that power has been stolen and accrued by the cabinet secretary. Kruger disputes this, and while he stopped short of going full conspiracy-theory, he does think that the conscious interest of too many at the top of the civil service is to make life difficult for politicians.

Kruger should see Romeo’s civil service review as an opportunity not a threat

Instead of dismissing Romeo’s review of the civil service, Kruger should in fact be setting it as a test for whether the prime minister and his cabinet secretary can tackle the problems that we know exist, both in the centre and in the civil service. Romeo’s fundamental review of how the civil service works is the best chance in years for making the improvements we know need to happen.
Kruger’s concerns about the civil service review should be a useful challenge for Romeo and the civil service. That his diagnosis aligns, in parts at least, with others’ who are frustrated by the problems of government – including the IfG, as articulated in our 2024 Commission on the Centre of Government – and senior civil servants, should be a wake-up call. The civil service must prove it can change, and this review must actually tackle these long-diagnosed problems, or the criticism that the civil service is incapable of reforming itself will continue to be proved valid. 

In some ways it’s a shame that Kruger and Romeo can’t sit down for a coffee, have a good debate about what’s gone wrong in government, and talk about what Burnham and Romeo should be doing as part of the review. It’s not going to happen – not least because as head of the civil service Romeo’s job is to serve the elected government of the day, not debate its struggles with opposition parties. But if they did then both would be better informed about what needs to change in the civil service. Kruger might still come away wanting to abolish the cabinet secretary but there might be less suspicion on both sides.

Reform UK need a far better answer on how to prevent corruption and cronyism in appointments

Where the pair would be unlikely to agree, however, is on the political appointment of the most senior civil servants. It is now well established that if they came into government Reform UK would – over time, Kruger said, not immediately – replace much of the top of the civil service with personal political appointees. There are many reasons to be cautious about this, but it’s not inherently outlandish or impossible. And political parties have anyway started to make more political or personal appointments on entering office – as Labour did, to some cost, in 2024.

But Kruger needs a far better answer to how he would guard against cronyism and corruption. Appointees would, he says, be rigorously assessed on merit, with ‘merit’ decided by Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Robert Jenrick, Kruger himself and his other colleagues. This doesn’t work and would lead to a cosy system of appointing friends of friends and placemen to important jobs. If Reform UK are to pursue a radical reform to civil service appointment they need to do far more to convince about the safeguards they would put in place to ensure an objective approach to putting the best people in top jobs.

Danny Kruger and Reform UK are right to be preparing for government and other opposition parties should take a leaf out of their book. It’s good that we can debate vital questions about how to organise the state in this way. And Romeo’s review of the civil service should take a look at Kruger’s work, alongside other inputs from inside and outside the civil service. 

But Kruger too should not write-off efforts by the civil service to improve. If they find themselves in the same coffee shop in Westminster, perhaps the cabinet secretary and MP should find a few minutes for that chat.