Reform UK MP Danny Kruger has launched a scathing attack on what he describes as fundamental dysfunction at the heart of Whitehall, arguing that elected politicians no longer truly run the country.
Speaking to GB News, Reform UK's preparing for power tsar said: "I think the public recognise there's a dysfunction in Government itself.
"And they might have noticed they keep changing the ministers and they keep voting for different parties to lead, and nothing actually changes. In fact, things get worse."
Mr Kruger contended that the genuine power lies elsewhere, stating: "And that's because the real Government, the people who actually run the country, aren't the elected politicians at the moment."
The Reform UK MP traced the roots of this dysfunction to the Blair era, when numerous Government functions were transferred to independent bodies and quangos.
These reforms, he argued, covered everything from interest rate decisions to environmental oversight.
Mr Kruger pointed to the Cabinet Office as a stark illustration of state expansion, noting: "The Cabinet Office was then created in the First World War to try and bring some cohesion to Government that became this great bloated beast that we have at the moment, which we've pledged to get rid of."
According to the Reform MP, the Cabinet Office employed just a few hundred staff in 1997 but has since ballooned to 11,000 people "all sitting at the centre, second guessing what departments do".
Danny Kruger has told GB News that Reform UK would 'reverse Blairism'
|GB NEWS
Mr Kruger argued that the solution lies not in revolutionary new thinking but in returning to established constitutional principles.
He said: "The fundamental point is an old fashioned one, which is we need to restore the democratic basis of our Constitution.
"Not because politicians are inherently better people than anybody else, in fact, quite the opposite."
The MP emphasised that no individual should wield unchecked authority, stating: "It's because nobody should be entrusted with absolute power, unaccountable power.
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Mr Kruger told GB News that Britain needs 'parliamentary sovereignty and ministerial accountability'
|GB NEWS
"And we need a system for holding them to account and making them reflect the actual wishes of what the public want and adapt in the light of events to correct course."
He identified the restoration of parliamentary sovereignty and ministerial accountability as the essential reforms required.
Mr Kruger warned that popular sovereignty has diminished even as the state apparatus has expanded, describing this as fundamentally incompatible with democratic governance.
He cited the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as a prime example of the problem.
He said: "Defra, the Department for environment, is now this great sprawling kind of octopus of agencies actually not properly connected to the centre. And many of them operate in independent remit, focusing on one specific environmental objective."
Rather than less political involvement, Mr Kruger argued Britain requires the opposite.
He stated: "We've kind of lost the art of politics and the challenge we have, the public really don't like politicians. They really don't like politics.
"But actually we need more politics, we need the politics to do its job, it's the management of our common life."