James Mahone: Britain’s problem is delivery. Only results, not rhetoric, can win back public trust

James Mahone is a Conservative Party member, and Founder of the Horizon Centre for Public Innovation.

In my last article, I argued that Britain’s problem is not simply its tax burden, but a deeper collapse of trust.

People feel that government now takes more than it gives back.

Promises are everywhere, but bills are rising, and the results feel thinner every year. People hear new announcements and expect little to change, and that growing gap has steadily eroded the government’s legitimacy.

This breakdown of trust is not just an idea; it shows up in daily life.

We can see this in where investors invest their money, how families budget, and particularly in how disengaged people feel towards their country and what they feel was once their community. When people stop believing that the very government the British people elect, fail to provide necessities, fail to keep British people safe, they withdraw. While confidence disappears, so too does capital as it starts to move elsewhere.

As the willingness to support the system shrinks, we are left with the obvious question: what do we do now?

We can’t go back to a time when an institution’s reputation alone was enough to earn trust. That is over. Today, credibility must be rebuilt from the ground up – and it must be rebuilt quickly.

The first problem is cultural. There are too many agencies and too many departments. Instead of focussing on getting things done, they are more concerned about box ticking. What is measured is not the result that was achieved, but simply the effort that was put in. Instead of admitting failure when a project fails, the usual reaction is that of avoidance, hiding behind jargon while ordering another review. When people see this, they conclude that nobody gets held to account.

Other failures are structural.

The government’s machinery is still built for a different time.

Billions of pounds are poured in, yet the system gets clogged up by the state, rather than cleared by it. Planning for critical housing and infrastructure drags on for years. Important grant schemes for universities are caught in red tape which then leaves students in limbo. Arts funding bodies get bogged down in debates about identity while places like the Royal Shakespeare Company struggle. These are not just failures of ideology; they’re failures of delivery, scale, and timeliness.

The problem is also political. Successive governments have been quick to come out with catchy slogans, but they have not been fixing broken systems. Every time there’s a gap between what’s promised and what’s delivered, the public feels even more betrayed.

However, there have been times when Britain has shown it can do things differently.

The NHS, for example, did not start as a massive Whitehall department; it was born from the vision of a few determined leaders who built something and proved it could work. Teach First started outside of government and demonstrated a model so effective, that policy then followed. More recently, the vaccine task force showed what’s possible when a small, focused team with a clear mission is freed from normal bureaucracy.

What these examples have in common isn’t a political colour, but urgency. Why they worked is not complicated. Teams were allowed to move quickly and focus on results. They cut through the noise and delivered. This attracted people who were motivated not by hierarchy, but by the mission itself. They earned legitimacy by achieving positive outcomes. The core lesson of this is that trust returns when institutions prove themselves through visible results.

This isn’t a call for more bureaucracy or for getting rid of the state. Britain needs a capable and strong government. But it also needs new partners – small, nimble organizations that can move faster than government while still working with integrity.

They would be delivery accelerators.

While they would be independent, they would be accountable, able to pilot solutions within months instead of years. Where resistance would usually be too entrenched, they can compete. They can work with willing parts of government. They can be businesses, nonprofits, or a combination of the two. However, the principle is the same: Solve a real problem, show the outcome, others can then adopt or improve it.

This is already starting to happen. We have investors, reform-minded citizens and civic leaders coming together across Britain. They have a common goal: to help the state improve by showing what works, while doing so in a quick and efficient manner. This effort isn’t about ideology. It’s about proof. If you can demonstrate a working solution – in housing, education, healthcare, or even cultural funding, you shift the debate from theory to reality.

That is why some of us are building an independent centre: to partner with communities, funders, and willing parts of government to break through gridlock. We will collaborate where possible, we will compete where necessary. There will always be one single test: did it work?

Critics might call this “privatization by stealth” or even a “shadow state.” The reality, however, is the complete opposite. The real threat to democracy is a state that can’t deliver, because when the basics collapse, people turn away from not just politicians, but the system itself.

At the heart of every new approach must be transparency and accountability. Small institutions only succeed if they are trusted. They earn trust by publishing results, by not confusing activity with outcomes and by admitting failure quickly, should failure occur. If a project does indeed fail, lessons should be learned and shared, not denied and hidden. That is how trust is earned.

At its core, this is an operational problem. Unless the state can prove it’s competent at the basics, people will keep opting out, moving their money, their effort, and their faith away from public systems.

Yet the loss of trust doesn’t have to be the end of the story. It can spark the start of a renewal. Confidence can return if we show, step by step, that the government with the right support, can deliver with speed, integrity and clarity. This is accomplished not through fancy slogans or consultations, but through results which people can see.

That’s why urgency matters. Britain can’t wait another decade for more reviews and rhetoric. We need to show what works and we need to show this now.

Once legitimacy has gone, only visible action will bring it back – and the good news is that across Britain, people are already taking those first steps.