For Starmer, the unelected Blob must always rule over the plebs

It’s been 177 days since the Labour Government was elected. And in that time, our new Prime Minister and his MPs have set up at least 25 quangos – almost one a week.

There’s the headliners like Great British Energy, Skills England and the Independent Football Regulator, the niche like the National Cladding Taskforce and School Support Staff Negotiating Body and the quangos to regulate the quangos, like the Regulatory Innovation Office. Pick an issue and it’s almost guaranteed that some Labour MP has come up with an unelected body to advise on it.

Labour’s penchant for intellectual outsourcing comes as no surprise – Blair and Brown were both partial to “expert” meddling in democratic processes. This is Keir Starmer we’re talking about, the man who answered “Davos” without taking a breath when asked where he preferred doing politics, Westminster or the technocrat’s convention in the Alps. One of Starmer’s first moves as Prime Minister was to announce a slew of appointments from James Timpson as prisons minister to Sir Patrick Vallance as science minister. Democratic accountability of the very lowest bar – being elected at the ballot box – seems not to matter to our new Government.

The signs were there from the start. In his August “fixing the foundations of our country” speech, Starmer referred to “populism” three times – first as an infection, second as a failure and third as a “cynical conflict”. Being popular can’t matter much to the Labour Party; after all, its election victory was infamously lacking in popular support. Kratos without the demos is simply power – and the Labour Party seems to believe that political power is more safely held in the hands of experts, appointees, civil servants, frankly anyone but you or me.

But what is the problem with an expert “quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation”? Who doesn’t need a little help when making decisions? Aside from being a waste of time and money, a love of quangos signals both a lack of ambition and a mistrust of the electorate.

Take the Office for Budget Responsibility, initially set up as a panic response after the global financial crash to provide what was supposed to be independent and transparent analysis. The OBR’s pronouncements are now treated as gospel by many MPs, who quote it as though its staff should write economic policy, rather than politicians who are answerable to voters.

All of this makes Labour’s crocodile tears for democratic change in the House of Lords stick in the craw. The recent row over hereditary peers was our Government’s attempt at looking like it cared about the little people.

How dreadful that these earls, viscounts and barons get a say in the legislative process simply by dint of their bloodline. This cheap shot at unelected lords might be true, but it begs the question as to what right any other lord or baroness has to sit on the plush red seats deciding which laws the great unwashed are governed by.

Despite widespread criticism of Sue Gray’s undemocratic tactics, scandals about nepotism and her son’s political position and a general dislike of her among the public, Keir Starmer has appointed his former chief of staff to the House of Lords to continue her meddling in how society runs, but this time in ermine. Give me a marquess over her any day.

This was supposed to be the bumper year for elections – democracy was tested around the world as voters showed up (or, indeed, didn’t show up) to express their political desires. And yet, in this country, democracy is in ill health. The Labour Party isn’t unique in its technocratic tendencies – let’s not forget that Rishi Sunak appointed David Cameron, a failed prime minister fresh from years in his garden shed, to conduct our foreign affairs.

But the only clear ideology discernible from Labour’s first few months in office is its desire to dilute democratic accountability. For Starmer and his MPs, the Blob is preferable to the pleb – the Blob can be controlled.

From setting up quangos to the outrageous suggestion of delaying council elections, our Government wants to hear from everyone but the people who matter most.