The Year, 2025
Each year feels an escalation on the last, as if some invisible force is playing a drunken game of ‘truth or dare’, but where every round has to be a dare and the dares involve ever escalating crises, failures and geopolitical disasters. Welcome to our 2025 ‘Year in Re:View’.
The year began with a Trump inauguration, flanked by big tech, and promising trade wars. The President delivered; and Keir Starmer scrambled to secure favourable terms for the UK (maintaining relations with the White House has become progressively harder, but arguably this has been a rare bright spot for the PM).
This was the backdrop to the Spring Statement, in which the OBR in their accompanying document noted “the economic and fiscal outlook has become more challenging since the Autumn Budget”, and that is without “explicitly account[ing] for the impact of recently announced tariff increases by the US and other countries”. Nine months on and the forecasts are worse.
As we discuss below, growth has remained elusive, not helped by a series of self-sabotaging moves by the Government (the U-turns on Winter Fuel and welfare, the delayed Budget and daily speculation about its contents, the ‘emergency’ pre-Budget statement by the Chancellor (what was that?!), and the fiscal drag that the OBR is clear will dampen household consumption).
In terms of public service reform, it’s been a mixed bag, but one in which there has been a glut of chocolate eclairs (officially the worst Cadbury’s Hero, according to the public) and not enough Twirls (you guessed it, the favourite). An ambitious AI Action Plan, and an energetic and expert new AI minister to execute it; the announcement of a game-changing virtual hospital and the ongoing development of the neighbourhood health service; an expansion of the test and learn model to identify — and now ‘grow’ — innovative practice. All positive. In contrast, the Government has very little to show for its promises to ‘rewire’ Whitehall, reduce the regulatory burden and end the quangocracy, and the devolution revolution appears to be stuttering. Maybe next year.
Let’s hope so, because the Government is running out of time to deliver the change it promised. Perhaps the most striking polling finding from the year was courtesy of More in Common, who found that 38% of people agreed with the statement ‘When I think about our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking “just let them all burn”’. That almost 4 in 10 Britons would “burn” down our institutions should shock any incrementalist into action. Luckily at Re:State we have radical but implementable solutions.
Below you will find our quotes, stats, and good and bad policies of the year.
From everyone at Re:State, we wish you all a very merry Christmas and we'll be back in the New Year.
Charlie
Director
💬 QUOTES OF THE YEAR
“Supportive employment practices are vital, but so too is personal responsibility: frustration with work, still less ‘I hate my boss’ syndrome, are not health conditions.”
Sir Charlie Mayfield in letter to the Government sharing his independent review, Keep Britain Working
“The UK lacks a plan for defending the homeland and overseas territories with little progress on the Home Defence Programme.”
House of Commons Defence Committee report on The UK contribution to European Security
“I’m not sure our democracy can stand another government promising change and delivering failure.”
Danny Kruger MP launching Reform UK’s Preparation for Government programme
“Politicians chose to hide behind a vast array of quangos, arms length bodies and regulators, you name it. A sort of cottage industry of checkers and blockers. Using taxpayer money to stop the government delivering on taxpayer priorities.”
Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister in a speech on Fundamental reform the British State
“Economic growth is the number one mission of this government. Without growth, we cannot cut hospital waiting lists… [and] we cannot meet our climate goals.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves, January 2025 source
“We have assessed that none of the policy measures in this Budget have a sufficiently material impact to justify adjusting our post-measures potential output forecast”
The OBR in their Economic and Fiscal Outlook published alongside the Budget
“It is my view that most of the well-publicised problems with core economic statistics are the consequence of ONS’s own performance.”
Sir Robert Devereux in his Independent Review of performance and culture at the ONS.
“It’s time for the BMA to get real…They are increasingly behaving in cartel-like behaviour. And they threaten not just the recovery of the NHS under this Government, they threaten the future of the NHS full stop. And I think that’s a morally reprehensible position to be in.”
Rt Hon Wes Streeting on the planned Winter strikes by resident doctors
🔢 THE YEAR IN NUMBERS
12% — the proportion of the public that trust governments to put the country’s interest before their party’s interests ‘just about always’ or ‘most of the time’.
£406.2 billion — the Autumn Budget’s forecast for total welfare spending in 2030-31, up from £314.7 billion in 2023-4.
8.5 million — the number of additional appointments that the creation of NHS Online will deliver in its first three years.
1.5% — forecast average real GDP growth between 2026-26 and 2030-31, revised down 0.3% a year by the OBR in November.
9.2 million — approximate number of people living in local authorities controlled by Reform UK following local elections in May.
8% — the proportion of civil servants who agree with the statement “the civil service in general manages poor performance well”; 79% disagreed. Results from our first Annual People Survey of 1,625 civil servants.
£96.8 billion — the value of major Government projects currently rated as “appears to be unachievable” by the IPA. Just £19.5 billion of projects are rated ‘Green’.
🏆 REFORMER OF THE YEAR
John Fingleton, Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce
The Taskforce’s report last month is a compelling case for overhauling the way the UK regulates nuclear energy, the economy’s best hope of cheaper and more sustainable energy. British nuclear energy infrastructure is the most expensive in the world to build, leaving us dependent on intermittent renewable energy and reliant on international gas supplies. A overly-bureaucratic approach to regulation, which is out of line with international standards, is costing taxpayers greatly. After a conditional acceptance from the Chancellor at Budget, his recommendations were wholly accepted by the Prime Minister a week later. For charting a path to the Government’s energy and growth goals, with detailed, actionable proposals, John Fingleton is our Reformer of the Year.
🏆 REACTIONARY OF THE YEAR
Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer
The Chancellor has had a tough year. Despite early efforts to cut the growth of disability-related benefit spending, reduce regulatory compliance costs and overhaul planning to get things built, we end the year with growth downgraded, welfare expanded, housing starts well off target and no sign of that plan to reduce the regulatory burden. To put it starkly, in January Reeves said “Economic growth is the number one mission of this government”, and in November, following decisions taken by the Government in the Budget, the OBR said, “We have assessed that none of the policy measures in this Budget have a sufficiently material impact to justify adjusting our post-measures potential output forecast”.
The Chancellor cannot alone be held responsible for the U-turns on welfare reform, the two-child cap and freezing the income tax thresholds, but these have been totemic parts of her fiscal approach. The run up to the Budget itself was also deeply damaging to the economy. Good government requires absolute clarity on priorities, and then accepting trade-offs and making tough decisions in pursuit of achieving those priorities. For saying one thing and actively pursuing a path that harms that thing, the Chancellor is our Reactionary of the Year.
👍 BEST POLICIES
NHS online
A flagship announcement in the PM’s Labour conference speech, NHS Online will be the world’s first virtual hospital. Originating in Re:State’s very own ‘Hospital of the Future’ programme, this will see millions more appointments — up to 8.5 million in its first three years — to speed up access to care. Starting with a selection of treatment areas with the longest waits, this innovation could revolutionise the NHS model and actually deliver the three shifts Government seeks.
Test, Learn and Grow
The Cabinet Office’s £100m Public Service Reform and Innovation Fund deploys multidisciplinary “innovation squads” (policy, tech and delivery/design expertise) into places across England to co-design and test practical service fixes and then feed what’s learnt back into national policy to be adapted and scaled. Wave 1 has focused on family support and temporary accommodation. Now the approach is being extended, with five ‘Total Place’-style pilots announced for Mayoral Strategic Authorities to test pooling public service budgets to break down siloes and shift spending towards prevention.
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
The Government’s landmark bill to enable them to deliver 1.5 million additional homes, currently awaiting Royal Assent, is a big step in the right direction to tackle Britain’s housing crisis. While it hasn’t gone far enough, particularly on measures like Strategic Industrial Land and presumptions around housing near train stations, both of which would help densify London where it’s most needed, this is one of the few measures that looks to set to quantifiably boost growth — as scored by the OBR.
Abolition of NHS England
The PM ended his March speech denouncing the “checkers and blockers” with a bang: NHS England, the largest quango in Europe, would be no more. “I don’t see why”, the PM argued, “decisions about £200 billion of taxpayer money, on something as fundamental to our security as the NHS, should be taken by an arms-length body, NHS England.” We couldn’t agree more — and indeed we called for this as early as 2017 and then again in 2024, and again this year in our paper ‘Quangocracy’. The Government now needs to take the next step and devolve NHS budgets and decision-making to mature regional mayoralities.
Prioritising AI
Matt Clifford’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, published in February, positioned the UK to be a global competitor in AI. And when it comes to meeting the objectives of attracting investment from global companies, the Government has been busy — including securing over £24 billion in November, and establishing new AI Growth Zones to attract investment in areas like South Wales. But we’re still hoping to see much more from the Government on the key area of more AI adoption in public services, without which we won’t see the benefits of a more efficient and effective public sector.
👎 WORST POLICIES
Relying on Voluntary Exit Schemes
It’s good that the Government is trying to reduce civil service headcount — Whitehall has become too big to succeed, and is still plagued by waste. But they have chosen the worst route to doing so: Voluntary Exit Schemes. By letting people go based on volunteers, it’s almost impossible to target poor performers or people whose jobs are no longer needed. And NAO guidance shows how expensive it can be — with staff being offered up to 21 months of salary to leave, and leaving them free to return without repaying after just six months out of the civil service! Instead, the Government needs to bite the bullet of better performance management and targeted, compulsory redundancy schemes to cut numbers.
Scrapping the two-child benefit cap
At a time when the benefits bill is soaring, with spending on disability and sickness benefits alone now set to top £100 billion by 2029-30, the Government decided to expand the welfare state further by scrapping the two-child limit — at a cost of around £3.5 billion. Simultaneously, they decided to increase taxes on low earners (and everyone else), via fiscal drag — meaning many of those families deciding not to have (more) children due to the cost, will be paying more to support those who do not have to consider affordability. Polling ahead of the Budget decision found just 26% of people supported scrapping the cap.
Long-grassing the Devolution Priority Programme (DPP)
Whitehall has spent more than a year urging the councils within its DPP areas to move fast: submit proposals, build consensus across councils, stand up shadow governance, and gear up for May 2026 votes. But now it has told four of these flagship areas (Greater Essex, Sussex and Brighton, Hampshire and the Solent, Norfolk and Suffolk) they will not elect mayors until May 2028. The problem is not only the democratic hit of cancelling a promised election. To a sceptical sector it reads as comfort with wasted effort, confirmation that Government was biting off more than it could chew, and normalisation of the entry-level “foundation” status for new Strategic Authorities. In other words, a cooling of devolution ambitions when councils have been told to expect a revolution.
Accidently setting prisoners free
The Ministry of Justice has misplaced an alarmingly large number of prisoners this year, accidentally. A spate of high-profile accidental releases in October and November drew attention to a longer-running trend of 12% higher accidental releases in 2024-25 than under previous Governments. At a time of cratering trust in politicians and wider institutions, this has served to further cement a sense that government is broken.
Abolishing single-word Ofsted judgements
File under ‘with the best of intentions’, but the latest revisions to how the key education sector regulator — Ofsted — communicates its assessments of the performance of the schools it inspects is a step backwards. Billed as a way to add nuance to Ofsted’s work of ensuring high standards, the reality is that this is a decision which removes information and clarity for parents and pupils. Ofsted reports always included detailed feedback across a series of areas. The new approach risks shifting the burden of interpretation onto parents, with a blur of colour-coded categories that encourages false precision, makes quick comparisons harder, and leaves families to draw overarching conclusions: work that the inspectorate used to do itself.
🪦 RIP
Mission-led government
The delivery philosophy the Government entered office with didn’t survive contact with the State they found themselves leading. The post-mortem on missions deserves more justice than we can give it here, but its sudden absence from all government communications makes it hard to see a future where it’s anything more than a list of things the Government would like to do. Not with a bang but with a whimper…
12 days to remake the State
‘Tis the season of hope and gifting. And in that festive spirit, we gift you this uplifting series of mini blogs.
In the run up to Christmas, we've been unwrapping a special Re:Think detailing a radical reform that is perfectly implementable and which would take us towards a remade State. For what is Christmas if not a time for optimism for a better future?
