The Fixer: Dominic Cummings on why Westminster needs change

The former advisor to Boris Johnson surveys the landscape of British politics

Seven years after the referendum and four prime ministers later, what should be obvious is still being denied across Westminster and Whitehall: this country is governed by a self-satisfied cartel of parties, civil servants, and media hacks who no longer even pretend to fix things. They just want to be seen to care, while everything gets worse.

Everyone says “we need change” but nobody in power is willing to do change. The system is fundamentally broken — and both Labour and the Conservatives are now fully invested in keeping it broken.

Take immigration. We ran the 2019 election on a simple promise: fix the system with a proper points-based model. Boris and I sat in meetings and said clearly, cut low-skilled immigration, increase the high-skilled intake. The mandarins smirked — they assumed we’d forget. When we didn’t, they simply blocked implementation. Once I left, and Boris got bored, the whole thing collapsed. We now have the highest legal migration numbers in history. Meanwhile, Sunak claimed he’d “stop the boats.” He didn’t even slow them.

Now Labour has taken over — and Starmer, Reeves and Streeting are carrying on exactly the same policies. Immigration, taxes, energy, education — no new ideas, no delivery, just more of the same, all underpinned by civil service groupthink and media theatre. They’ve simply inherited the Osborne-Sunak-Bailey model and are going through the motions.

People outside SW1 can see this. They know politics is a Potemkin village. A fake machine with fake meetings and fake decisions. When I worked in No.10, you’d see it every day: Cabinet ministers reading out scripts written by civil servants, prime ministerial “conclusions” pre-written before a word had been spoken. The actual battles happen in the footnotes — over who writes the paper that goes into the meeting, not the meeting itself.

This is not a functioning democracy. It’s a bureaucracy masquerading as one.

Ask yourself this: why is public trust at historic lows? Because people have voted again and again for change — in 2010, in 2016, in 2019 — and watched as nothing actually changed. Blair, Cameron, May, Johnson, Starmer — all variants of the same formula: no strategy, no urgency, no accountability. The system absorbs opposition, neutralises disruption, and rewards inertia.

Reeves warned of a £22 billion black hole in public finances — then raised £40 billion in taxes. The IFS said the hole was £10 billion. So either Labour can’t count or they’re gaslighting the public. And their reward? More media praise. Meanwhile, services get worse, NHS waits grow longer, and productivity collapses.

You can’t fix this with another focus group or one more spin doctor. It needs a complete redesign.

We need a new model of governance — one that prioritises outcomes, not appearances. That means stripping back Whitehall, rebuilding from first principles, and ending the system where ministers serve officials, not the other way around. Real reform would mean cutting 30% of central bureaucracy, moving key institutions out of London, and hiring people who’ve built things rather than people who’ve sat in panels about building things.

People say: “Ah, but what about Farage and Reform?” Good question. On the one hand, Nigel says the right things. He’s long been consistent on borders and energy. On the other hand, Reform is not a serious political party. It’s a limited company in which Farage is the sole shareholder. There’s no structure. No candidates. No strategy. It’s not a party, it’s a protest vehicle. Can it help topple the establishment? Probably. Can it run a government? No.

So where does that leave us? In a country where voters know that the core issue isn’t party versus party — it’s system versus people. Westminster versus the rest. And as long as officials, broadcasters and legacy parties keep pretending that this is all normal — that our economic stagnation, migration chaos and institutional decay are just background noise — things will keep getting worse.

We need new forces. New coalitions. New brains. And less politics-as-PR. Until then, we’re just rearranging deckchairs while the ship takes on water.