The asylum chaos is just the start. If we don’t sack the slackers and bring in proper grafters, we’re heading for trouble on the streets.

Let’s stop pretending: the UK civil service is broken. Not creaking, not struggling—broken. It’s turned from the engine room of government into a bureaucratic black hole, swallowing money, time, and trust while delivering less than ever before. And the worst bit? They don’t even seem to care.

Take asylum claims as the clearest example. People fleeing war and persecution deserve quick decisions—either welcome them or send them home. Simple as that. But our civil servants have made the process so slow and shambolic that thousands sit in limbo, hotels are stuffed full, costs are through the roof, and the public are rightly furious. That’s not a “system under pressure.” That’s a system that’s stopped working because the people running it know there are no consequences for failure.

In the private sector, if you can’t deliver, you’re out. If your business grinds to a halt because you can’t process customers, you won’t have a business for long. But in the civil service, job security trumps performance. You can be incompetent for decades, and the only thing you’ll get is a gold-plated pension at the end of it. No wonder nothing works.

I actually like the idea of bringing in Greg Jackson from Octopus Energy to sort things out. Here’s a bloke who built one of the UK’s most successful companies in record time—innovative, customer-focused, efficient. He knows how to get things moving. But I’ll tell you this: he’s about to learn that the civil service isn’t just slow; it’s built to resist change. The whole culture is designed to say “no,” to drag its feet, to smother ambition in meetings and memos until the clock runs out and nothing happens.

And let’s be honest about why this mess has been allowed to fester. After Brexit, too many in Whitehall saw themselves as the last line of defence against the will of the people. They became a sort of internal opposition, deciding what they would and wouldn’t deliver. That’s not their job. Nobody voted for them. But they’ve realised that by doing nothing, by letting the system fall apart, they hold the real power.

Well, here’s the danger: Britain is now on a knife edge. People see small boats arriving while the government dithers. They see rising costs, falling services, and civil servants who act like they’re untouchable. Keep going like this, and the anger will spill over. Civil unrest stops being a theory when people feel their leaders—and the machine behind them—aren’t on their side. I’m not talking about a polite march through London. I’m talking about the kind of division no one wants to see in this country.

And here’s the kicker: Labour didn’t cause this mess. But now they’re in charge, they’re terrified of taking on the civil service. They don’t want a fight. So the same pen-pushers carry on running the show, while ministers make speeches and nothing changes. Every day of inaction drags us closer to a point where people lose faith completely—and when that happens, things turn ugly fast.

The answer? Sack the ones who won’t deliver. Reward the ones who do. Bring in leaders like Greg Jackson and actually let them rip up the rulebook. Treat taxpayers like customers again, not an inconvenience. Because if we keep letting the civil service mark its own homework, the whole system will fail—and when that happens, no one wins.