Elon Musk’s Doge assumed that cheaper government was better government. that’s the wrong way round: a better run government is a cheaper government, says Andrew Greenway

Democracies around the world are facing a big problem. They don’t deliver well enough.

In Britain, we have a housing crisis, a fraying health service and the interminable sagas of major projects like HS2 and Sizewell C. And we’re not alone. Germany has spent €11bn and 15 years on its own ill-starred rail project in Stuttgart. In the US, a $7.5bn investment in electric vehicle charging stations built only 47 stations across 15 states. Ireland’s housing crisis is bringing people out onto the streets.

The public cottoned on to the effects of low state capacity some time ago. The poverty, the pilfering and the potholes leads to populism, which thrives on that grumpiness. Pennies are now dropping among politicians on the left and right. The noisiest attempt to address these questions so far is Doge, the team set up in Washington DC under the now-departed Elon Musk. Doge promised to strip out $2 trillion of state spending and bring a bloated bureaucracy to heel. Despite much bluster, it is........

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