Starmer is repeating Tory mistakes by picking on the blob

The first Labour premier in 14 years sounds like he's been listening to the Jacob Rees-Mogg playbook.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers his Plan for Change Speech (via Kirsty O'Connor / No 10 Downing Street)

In the dying gasps of the last Conservative government, it became common practice, especially on the right, to blame any failings on the “blob”.

Bureaucratic red tape and work-shy mandarins, not bad policies or ministerial incompetence, was the real reason successive Tory PMs couldn’t get Brexit done or control small boat crossings.

Now Labour, in power just five months, has singled out the civil service, with Sir Keir Starmer saying “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”.