Former senior civil servant. Director of Programme @FixBritain_ https://teapawt.net/t.co/WSXhL3lTwG
Joined January 2024
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Have loved working at @Policy_Exchange with fantastic colleagues. Excited to announce a book deal with @politybooks 'Make Bureaucracy Great Again' on the collapse and rebuild of UK state capacity (due mid 26), and thanks to @tylercowen for EV support. Other projects to follow!
The Left Party's proposed mayor of Berlin accidentally reveals to Spiegel her fear of violence from left wing terrorist sympathisers. A Bundestag PQ recorded 193 violent offences against party representatives in 2025, of which 121 targeted the AfD.sfhwebb.substack.com/p/how-e…
"As the senior Treasury mandarin Sir Leo Pliatzky wearily said of public spending in the 1970s; “It’s like elephants at the water hole. You drive them off, and drive them off, and in the evening, back they come.”
sfhwebb.substack.com/p/a-per…
Stephen Webb retweeted
Stephen Webb asks why the Treasury clings to such unrealistic fiscal assumptions on migration. He settles on incuriosity, short-termism, and a failure of what John Erskine called "the moral obligation to be intelligent".
sfhwebb.substack.com/p/a-per…
Stephen Webb retweeted
We are now 5 months after the start of Ukraine's 🇺🇦 Vivaldi operation and it has now officially ended
A month after the operation was revealed, we know have much more information on the biggest Ukrainian success of the year.
🧵THREAD🧵1/18 ⬇️
Stephen Webb retweeted
🧵Another Gaza narrative collapses. Israel was accused of routinely killing innocent "aid seekers" and workers. Israel said Hamas & PIJ gunmen operated among them. Now their own martyr notices confirm a large number of supposed "aid seekers" were combatants. Ongoing thread: 1/
Stephen Webb retweeted
Grateful to @stephenfhwebb for his write up of my interviews with almost every living former Home Secretary. He captures the themes brilliantly.
His writing is informative and entertaining. I recommend his piece on Robert Peel's Home Office of 17 staff!
sfhwebb.substack.com/p/home-…
The 'firewall' is destroying the CDU in Germany; it plays massively to the advantage of the left. What evidence is there really that the AfD is a danger to democracy?
How Extremist are the AfD actually? sfhwebb.substack.com/p/how-e…
great post by @daisychristo and true about the Navy. senior ranks were highly meritocratic and demonstrated social mobility until higher social status of the Victorian Navy saw officers increasingly upper class - after the Navys period of greatest glory.
A very interesting article about Victorian elites. I would probably agree with the counter-cultural point that the Victorian elites were (in education terms) more prog than trad! Or at least more prog than you might assume.
I think the question that is harder to answer is: to what extent did that elite behaviour cause or sustain British greatness.
At first sight it seems obvious that it does. At the point these elites were in charge, Britain was top nation! QED!
But of course it doesn't quite work like that.
Here is a good modern analogy. When I started out in education, everyone was raving about Finland's education system, which regularly topped the tables of international tests.
And then people went to Finland and said: Finland is top of the world in 2005, so let's copy what they are doing in 2005.
What they missed is that the kids who were topping the tables in 2005 had started school in the 90s. And the policies which governed education in the 1990s had been set in the 1970s.
So you had to go back a long way to find out what actually caused Finnish success in 2005. And it turned out those policies were very different to the ones that were present in schools in 2005!
It's possible something similar is true with British hard power.
It is probably at its lowest modern ebb in the 1660s, after the Dutch raids on the Medway.
However, this is also the point that Pepys brings in far-reaching naval reforms that arguably lay the foundation of British naval greatness.
Later, you have figures like Cook, Bligh, Flinders, Nelson, etc who clearly play a major part in establishing British global dominance.
Again, some of this takes place at low points for British hard power. EG Cook is travelling the world at the point Britain is losing its American colonies.
So it would seem absurd to say the elite culture of the 1660s and 1770s is actually more effective than that of the 1850s. But whilst it might sound absurd, it could be true!
What kind of elite culture is more effective? The high Victorian "prog" culture described by Samuel in this piece?
Or the culture Cook established on his 1770s Pacific voyages?
Who does more to create effective elites - Samuel Pepys or Charles Trevelyan?
I am in the midst of a series about this on my Substack. See here.
substack.nomoremarking.com/p…
Stephen Webb retweeted
A very interesting article about Victorian elites. I would probably agree with the counter-cultural point that the Victorian elites were (in education terms) more prog than trad! Or at least more prog than you might assume.
I think the question that is harder to answer is: to what extent did that elite behaviour cause or sustain British greatness.
At first sight it seems obvious that it does. At the point these elites were in charge, Britain was top nation! QED!
But of course it doesn't quite work like that.
Here is a good modern analogy. When I started out in education, everyone was raving about Finland's education system, which regularly topped the tables of international tests.
And then people went to Finland and said: Finland is top of the world in 2005, so let's copy what they are doing in 2005.
What they missed is that the kids who were topping the tables in 2005 had started school in the 90s. And the policies which governed education in the 1990s had been set in the 1970s.
So you had to go back a long way to find out what actually caused Finnish success in 2005. And it turned out those policies were very different to the ones that were present in schools in 2005!
It's possible something similar is true with British hard power.
It is probably at its lowest modern ebb in the 1660s, after the Dutch raids on the Medway.
However, this is also the point that Pepys brings in far-reaching naval reforms that arguably lay the foundation of British naval greatness.
Later, you have figures like Cook, Bligh, Flinders, Nelson, etc who clearly play a major part in establishing British global dominance.
Again, some of this takes place at low points for British hard power. EG Cook is travelling the world at the point Britain is losing its American colonies.
So it would seem absurd to say the elite culture of the 1660s and 1770s is actually more effective than that of the 1850s. But whilst it might sound absurd, it could be true!
What kind of elite culture is more effective? The high Victorian "prog" culture described by Samuel in this piece?
Or the culture Cook established on his 1770s Pacific voyages?
Who does more to create effective elites - Samuel Pepys or Charles Trevelyan?
I am in the midst of a series about this on my Substack. See here.
substack.nomoremarking.com/p…
The elites of Victorian Britain got up late, drank ceaselessly, worked short hours, partied through the night, and knew nothing about science, technology or engineering. And yet, by their own lights, they were hugely effective.
worksinprogress.co/issue/the…
The Victorians are often held up as a model against the supposedly soft, feckless, humanities-educated elites of today. But I argue that the genius of their system may have been its drastic weighting towards soft skills, team-building and intra-elite networking:
- A Victorian’s gentleman’s office hours typically began about 11am and finished about 5pm, including a multi-course lunch with wine.
- Upper-class Victorians drank ceaselessly. Conduct guides recommended four or five glasses of wine at dinner *for married women*. Port was often served in pints.
- Party culture was intense and nocturnal. Balls started at about 10pm, peaked after 1am, and continued till dawn. During the social season, bankers, judges and politicians might go to several balls per week.
- Elite Victorians learnt almost no STEM at school or university. At least half of class time was given over to ancient languages, often as much as 80 percent. One leading educationalist remarked that it was not worth teaching science to gentlemen because it does not involve ‘continued reasoning’.
- Sports and character formation were valued far above transmitting facts. A top headmaster described his school’s priorities as ‘First – character, second – physique, third – intelligence, fourth – manners, fifth – information’.
This cannot have made elite Victorians more productive individually, but maybe the dense social and emotional network it created helped them to work as a sort of extended team.
Perhaps we should think again about what makes groups of people effective.
Stephen Webb retweeted
"The trouble with taking back control was that we then had to give it to somebody"
"Most of the people available were the same people who had spent 40 years explaining that they couldn’t, or shouldn’t, or didn’t want to do anything, because of Brussels"
-- David Frost
Stephen Webb retweeted
Interesting and encouraging from @stephenfhwebb - Burnham does seem to be moving against the consultation state sfhwebb.substack.com/p/has-a…
This is positive - a sign the government is moving away from the age of Starmer/Hermer? Tighter JR, more robust guidance on legal risk and fewer consultationshttps://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a9e6e939a177a1decf97e8b/The_Simplification_and_Agency_of_Government.pdf
BBC News - Could these alternative homes be the future in a hotter Britain? - BBC News
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg5l…
BBC economics; spend £80k turning your house into a Passivhays to cope with global warming - save £750 on energy bills a year
"There is no serious discussion of ridding the Army of the masses of senior and mid ranking officers colecting generous wages and accruing the best pensions in the country. An officer who secures a 'regular commission' has won a sinecure entitling himhim to service up to 60" 1/?
"The Army has two fighting divisions and 50 Major Generals"
sfhwebb.substack.com/p/the-b…
"failure to 'convert' one's commission from an 'IRC' to a 'Reg C' is rare enough to be spoken about in hushed tones when gossipping about the seriously incompetent" 2/?
Stephen Webb retweeted
Today on the CapX briefing: Ben Houchen – I don't want Andy's pocket money
Plus: why are we banning energy drinks, and could AI make Whitehall worse?
Featuring:
@BenHouchen
@cjsnowdon
@RossjournoClark
@stephenfhwebb
@jburnmurdoch
Stephen Webb retweeted
Really, really good, common sense point
Interesting argument from @stephenfhwebb - the mushrooming of the regulatory state is primarily due to the introduction of word processors. If people actually had to print all this bullshit out... sfhwebb.substack.com/p/will-…
