The Re:View is out! This week, @ce_pickles asks how long the Government can put off the difficult decisions on public spending, and what this week’s changing messages on welfare tell us. Read more 👇 restate.substack.com/p/the-r…

📈 @OBR_UK now forecasts 10.8 million people will pay the higher or additional rate of income tax by March 2031. This is 6 million more than if the higher rate threshold had risen with CPI inflation since 2022, and 250,000 more than the OBR forecast in March.

The Chancellor warned of economic “storms”. But has the Autumn Budget done enough to weather them? Our latest Re:Act breaks down the good, the bad and the 'why didn't you just get on with it'. Read on 👉restate.substack.com/p/react…

The Re:Act is up! @ce_pickles gives her verdict on the Budget, after our team spent their afternoon trawling through PDFs so you don’t have to. restate.substack.com/p/react…

There is a comprehensive evidence base that expansion of Heathrow would deliver big economic benefits. I hope James Cleverley changes his mind on this, continued restraint of one of our best assets as a global city is a disaster!

Today we published the results of our Alternative People Survey's 2026 edition, done in partnership with @CSWnews and Public First. Andrew Noore has written about what the survey tells us about Whitehall for our Substack 👇 restate.substack.com/p/why-w…

The Alternative People Survey 2026 is out! With @CSWnews and @stonehaven_uk , we asked 1,747 civil servants how Whitehall is really working. AI use is up, but on recruitment, promotion and performance, little has changed. Read the full report here: re-state.co.uk/publications/…

Whitehall is a weird place. The civil service, a workforce of more than half a million people, aren’t allowed to tell you what they think about the biggest issues they work on. Impartiality means officials can’t take public positions on policy, and in practice it stretches to much of their own experience of work as well. The one official outlet, the Cabinet Office’s People Survey, asks the questions the Cabinet Office wants answered. I spent seven years in the Treasury and the Home Office and never once said publicly what I thought about how the place was run, and I feel bad for civil servants who are stuck in this system and don’t have an outlet. So last year @restate_thinks and @CSWnews started the Alternative People Survey, to give civil servants a way to say how the system they work in is actually functioning. This year’s edition, published today with along with Public First, had 1,747 responses, 38% more than last year. They have plenty to say! “There is no culture of managing poor performance, so managers don’t do it.” “Internal promotions are non-existent. If you do well in your job and wish to obtain a higher grade you have to leave your post or go through the job evaluation process which could mean applying for your own job.” “Our voluntary exit scheme was terribly communicated and has resulted in top performers leaving. Our department is around 10% smaller but workloads are unchanged.” “I bought an iPhone charger cable via (a procurement service) for £18. The same item at Asda cost £2.” These are not disgruntled outliers, these are mainstream views on Whitehall in Whitehall. 76% disagree with the statement that the civil service manages poor performance well. 66% don’t think internal promotion puts the right people in the job. Four times as many say voluntary exit schemes are losing high performers as poor ones. 60% think government buys badly from the private sector. The appetite for change and reform is considerable! 82% now use AI in their work, up from 30% a year ago. 62% want pay rises based on performance, not the flat structure that’s available to most of the civil service. 52% feel encouraged to cut waste, up from 37%. 71% say processes get in the way of doing their job, rising to 79% among Grade 6s and the Senior Civil Service, so the people who run the machine are the ones most frustrated by it. The PM has an ambitious agenda to rewire Whitehall, and the officials who will have to deliver that have just told him(anonymously) where to start: hire, promote, pay and remove people properly. Full survey re-state.co.uk/publications/… And Substack restate.substack.com/p/why-w…

Report launch eve at Re:State 🔥

Today I went to a select committee hearing on AI. A few interesting things came out of it, but what really stuck with me was the behaviour of the MPs They weren’t paying attention At one point I counted 6 of the 13 MPs on the committee looking at their phones. And not in that way you do when you’re quickly checking something - two stared at their phones for over half an hour. Several others left before the end Many people think AI is the most important thing in the world. The MPs were warned there was a 50/50 chance it might destroy humanity! You’d think that’d be enough to make you take your chance to listen to experts and key players on the topic - apparently not