𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

In Indonesia they’re having a bonfire of the quangos. Setting fire to those sprawling ambition-crushing, red-tape obsessed little bodies which spread like political mould unless you keep them firmly in check. Now, Indonesia is not a country hugely familiar to most Brits, it’s not in the Commonwealth, and it’s on the other side of the world. But with a population of nearly 300 million, GDP by spending power two places above Britain and year-on-year growth of 5.5% it seems like a place that Mr Burnham and Mr Healey might learn from.

Rather marvellously its president Prabowo Subianto is currently reining-in its faceless bureaucrats and bringing all his potentially money-spinning state-owned assets under one powerful umbrella called Danantara Indonesia. And the plan is that the Government uses all that clout to actually make money. It’s a sort of state-level Dragon’s Den, with a government inviting entrepreneurs to pitch, then backing the potential winners.

Imagine that – a Government that makes money rather than just spends it. Indeed, compare and contrast with Britain where the arrangement always seems to work the other way round. Private investors pocket the profits in the good times, while taxpayers are expected to ride to the rescue when everything goes horribly wrong. We famously privatise the profits and socialise the losses. Anyone think that is not what’s about to happen with Southern Water?

Modern times need modern political method, and the Dragons’ Den approach seems an eminently workable plan to boost Britain’s pitiful levels of both productivity and outside investment – without which, as we may well soon discover, everything else collapses.

Indonesia is even setting up a sort of Great Exhibition called the New Asia Forum, inviting the world to come pitch their ideas (knowing the huge prize of government backing might await) and this is expected to attract $30bn in investment over just three days of the event. Trillions of dollars worth of investors and companies – from the US’s massive $1.8tn Franklin Templeton Investments to Japan’s Softbank which runs the world’s largest tech-focused venture capital fund will be turning up to see what deals – profitable for all concerned – can be done.

And, unlike far too often in Britain, the Indonesian state will not be a sleeping partner – it will be a hard-headed commercial player, investing alongside private companies, sharing the risks and, crucially, taking a share of the profits for the exchequer. The state retains a seat at the table, with the opportunity to exercise oversight and protect the public interest (rather than standing helplessly by as, say, another water company collapses under a mountain of debt).

Subianto has also realised slashing red tape is a vital element of making a country attractive to investors. It is a lesson Britain could to well to learn. A cursory Google shows Britain’s burgeoning list of major works bogged down in red tape. Staggeringly the desperately-needed Lower Thames Crossing to ease the horrible M25 chokepoint has been on the books since 1973. More than half a century on it is possible, just possible, spades might hit soil sometime next year. Same with HS2, Sizewell C, Hinkley Point, Heathrow runway, Stonehenge Tunnel and on, and on.

Former Top Gear legend Jeremy Clarkson has made an entertaining second career (okay, fifteenth career) out of his Kafkaesque red tape battles with West Oxfordshire District Council.

When he wanted to open his restaurant, the police, Environment Agency, Historic England, Natural England, parish council, water company and assorted highways officials all had to be consulted and all chipped in their production-hindering two penn’orth, because, as Clarkson brilliantly observed, “if they don’t, they’re admitting their jobs are pointless.”

Which all too often they are.

Pointless, but not harmless. Potential UK investor Jonathan Oppenheimer, whose family made its fortune through Anglo American and De Beers, complained Britain takes “30 years to do a nine-month project” while Jim Johnson, former chief executive of oil and gas engineering giant Hunting, went further, describing Britain as “less investable than Venezuela”. Yes, Venezuela, that beacon of economic stability and bureaucratic excellence.

Of course in his recent budget Chancellor Healey had the chance to change all this, to re-energise the construction industry, stripping the mass of red-tape away. He failed miserably.

Instead he incomprehensibly announced plans to make AI planning tools available to every English council by the end of 2027. That’s right, instead of axing pointless quangos or re-writing planning law to supercharge productivity, he is bringing in a technology which will create mountains of new paperwork at the speed of light… for the same faceless bureaucrats to spend months and years objecting to, while the people who actually want to build something wait and wait and wait.

Britain needs a government which knows how to make money rather than just how to spend it. We are in the mind-blowing position of struggling not just to service our debts, but the debts we took out to service our debts.

We need a government that doesn’t treat business either as a cash cow to be milked or a basket case to be rescued. We need ministers who behaving like serious investors, backing commercially viable projects, demanding proper returns and letting entrepreneurs get on with running their businesses.

And we need a government, for once, which sees British taxpayers sharing in the rewards when an investment makes money, rather than simply footing the bill when it loses it.