You want to watch Elon Musk’s hot squad rampage in the U.S. federal bureaucracy in a few weeks, and people may have radiated his “efficiency” drivers not exactly as advertised.
However, worship of deregulation must be a good thing, rather than being considered a cautionary tale, it attracts many disturbing global followers. When France suddenly pushes the EU for a "mass regulatory pause", you know that the situation is not normal. However, in the UK, despite the very different political culture and administrative systems, the habitual existence of the United States remains.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch weirdly said this week that Musk’s so-called Ministry of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not far enough. At the end of Trump’s first week, Simon Case, the former head of the British civil servant, wrote admirably about the “extreme transparency” of the U.S. efficiency driver and said it could provide a global approach to reshaping the government. model. This argument is already very bad given that Musk is causing harm during the day.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is far less extreme and thankfully, although he did propose deregulation in his first call with the U.S. president, it didn't inspire Trump . But his administration still shows some disturbing tendencies in this direction. Now, ministers’ speeches and writings have transcended Labor’s long-standing commitment to mitigating construction and infrastructure programs, and now routinely select general calls against excessive regulations.
You can think of all of this as standard empty pro-business rhetoric, but it seems dangerous at this relaxed and moderated destructive time. You can be sure this is not in the Labour election manifesto, and besides the planning issue, there are some vague words about coordinating regulation and proposing new rules on artificial intelligence, a commitment that is quickly retreating.
If the government is clearly eager to change the political narrative and will rob any idea marked as deregulation, it could cause serious damage. When the opposition, Rachel Reeves called labor in UK regulators last month and found that labour apparently did not propose an economic model and did not propose his own ideas. The government then kicked out the chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) because he wasn't too keen to approve the merger.
CMA has long been criticized by large companies, especially in the technology sector, for preventing takeovers and taking too long to make decisions. Now you can debate the operation of UK competition policy on processes and results. But there is concern that the government appears to identify the interests of large companies as promoting growth.
Unlike product standards or green regulations, competition policy is more than just a matter of protecting consumer or environmental interests and corporate interests. Unregulated monopolies have brought huge profits to monopolists, but have traditionally produced no growth or innovation.
If the economics of the tech industry means that the trade-off between limiting market advantages and growth is outdated, we should hear why. If you’ve gained from the economic history of the United States that it’s ignoring more than a century of antitrust while Trump’s weeks of deregulation, you’re doing it wrong.
Of course, Britain has a huge irony. The rules that affect companies are not written purely in the temporary form of vicious regulatory agencies. Many people promote growth and are created by the company itself, sometimes by the company. For example, after the global scale standard was officially adopted, the use of 20-foot shipping containers revolutionized world commodity trade.
It happens that the UK has begun experiments with radical deregulation over the past five years, rejecting official rules and regulations that are primarily related to businesses. The system is a single EU market and customs alliance, and the experiment is called Brexit. It is based on a thorough fabrication of the EU regulations such as bending bananas and fails, accounting for about 5% of GDP. If the government wants a growth model, then ironically, the regulatory model that rejoins the EU super heritage is there, and I haven't seen any compelling argument that exceeding the EU's AI regulatory framework will outweigh the gains. The government's refusal to discuss the issue correctly shows that it lacks seriousness in growth.
There is a measured, persuasive debate about good and bad regulation. Drawing inspiration from Musk, Musk's streamlined approach is actually "Ctrl-f (thing I don't like) - Choose veto", which is not the case. Nothing that big business tells you is. The meaningless crusade against regulation - the use of outdated metaphors such as the "Traditional Tape Festival" and "Blueprint" is always a warning sign - could end up causing huge damage and in a hurry to fulfill political orders Under the rules that are formulated or failed are certain - the shooting method is wrong.
alan.beattie@ft.com