"After the Budget this week, it feels as if political ambition has met the practical reality of sustaining long-term political direction inside institutions designed around stability and risk management. Add a " black hole" in public finances and sporadic and often contradictory regulation, and it has rarely been harder for public servants to know what to decide - or, critically, how to make decisions in the first place."
"Drawing on my work in early-stage policymaking at HMRC and research at UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, this short piece of "writing as thinking" argues that the UK's public institutions are structurally incapable of navigating uncertainty because they are built on a decision-making logic designed for predictability, control and linear planning - not for complexity, learning or adaptation."
Labour's electoral promise of national renewal and a mission-driven state confronts institutional realities that favor predictability and risk management over adaptation. Political ambition collides with constrained public finances, sporadic regulation and institutions structured around stability, making it difficult for public servants to know what to decide and how to decide. Early-stage policymaking contexts reveal high uncertainty, with teams struggling to balance experimentation and iterative learning against the need to maintain direction and meet deadlines. Institutions tend to produce controlling procedures yet lack capabilities for genuine learning, rapid experimentation and reorientation, requiring changes to everyday decision-framing and contestation.
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