Are the UK’s National Projects Doomed to Fail? Almost Certainly

Rachel Reeves has the bit between her teeth. She wants to speed up delivery of Britain’s “critical” national projects — like the Heathrow third runway — through an overhaul of planning rules. That’s a good start, Rachel, but you might have missed one small detail: planning reform or not, government is just really, really bad at delivering… well, anything. From the 40 New Hospitals to HS2, to the £10 billion written off in the National Programme for IT — these are not exceptions but symptoms of a chronic issue: the machinery of government consistently fails to turn plans into outcomes.

Albert Einstein reportedly defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. The 'implementation gap' is no surprise to politicians or officials, yet they continue to devise grand plans under the illusion they will be implemented. The fact that the problem is not unique to particular politicians or parliaments shows it is systemic - indeed scholars who research the 'implementation gap' all agree: no matter how good the policy, failure to implement is, almost exclusively, inevitable.

Not to worry - if things fail really badly, we can have an ‘Inquiry.’ If only inquiries were exempt from the implementation gap; according to the Institute for Government, only six out of sixty eight recent public inquiries have been followed up. There must be something exempt - how about ‘pandemic preparedness,’ - oh, hang on a minute… Inability to delivery is not a side issue. Our public services are crumbling, and as major crisis mount - from war in the middle east to climate change; from migration to the next pandemic - reform is becoming essential.

As a Senior Civil Servant working on transformation, I see sensible and intelligent officials attempting to implement things every day. They devise plans, establish committees, produce exhaustive lists of actions — all perfectly sensible. Yet, somehow, delivery remains absent. Why can so many sensible people not work the government implementation machine?

Tony Blair offers a clue in his 2024 book On Leadership. Leaders, he argues, often treat the machinery of government “like an instrument in their hands” — something they can learn to use. In reality, it is “a living organism [with] a mind and a temperament.” Instruments can be operated with manuals and predictable levers, but organisms behave according to their own internal logic. Any parent of a toddler or teenager can attest: linear plans and cause-and-effect rules do not apply. Leaders can’t work the machinery of government - because it isn’t a machine.

As leaders continue to use tools designed for a ‘machine’ - such as plans and targets - to control the organism, a growing body of research shows these approaches do not deliver. Indeed Lars Skyttner, pioneer of Systems Theory, notes that in trying to control the uncontrollable, bureaucracy perpetuates itself. Meanwhile, frustrated, leaders continue to pull the same levers - either to no effect or greater harm. They begin to lament in private, then in public, perhaps claiming that the machine is in ‘tepid decline’ (Kier Starmer, 2024), ‘lazily inefficient’ (Lord Wallace 2024) or ‘inadequately led’ (Dominic Cummings 2021). These may or may not be fair criticisms, but they miss the fundamental problem; government is a ‘bureaucracy beast’, not an ‘implementation machine’ - for as along as leaders persist in treating it as the latter, implementation of critical policies will remain absent.

Mastering the beast requires a fundamental shift in approach. Machines can be designed and controlled, but organisms must be engaged through purpose and action. You can’t plan and performance manage your way out of a toddler’s tantrum - indeed even a public inquiry won’t help here. You have to act; if it works, continue. If it doesn’t, stop and try again. Systems researchers agree that this is the only way to achieve real results in a complex system like the machinery of government. The private sector increasingly adopts this “act now, fail fast” approach, but in government, there remain huge cultural barriers.

Bridging the gap from bureaucracy to delivery requires bold leadership. Leaders must be willing to strip away layers of bureaucracy that stifle delivery, break rules, and become uncomfortable with a lack of control. They must actively reduce the controls that reduce risk-taking in order to take risks that might not pay off - and level with the public on this. As the public, we have a role to play. We need our politicians to say - ‘we’re trying something new - it might fail,’ rather than ‘we’re doing the same as always - it will certainly fail.’ Government leaders must have the courage to take real risks, but we as the public must let them - the alternative is the inevitable decline of our public services.

As party conference season gets underway, I’m sure we’ll hear grand promises of new national projects, but this is useless if government can’t deliver them. Great idea for the Northern Powerhouse Rail Project, Rachel — but are you planning to deliver it in the same way all those other failed programmes? If so, history can tell use the outcome.