About
About The Future Governance Forum
The Future Governance Forum (FGF) is a progressive, non-partisan think tank focused on reforming the state with the ultimate goal of renewing the nation. We make politically credible recommendations for reforms that can be delivered nationally and locally, build strong networks to test new ideas, and collaborate and use our relationships with public, private and social sector leaders to innovate.
Our current programmes of work explore:
- In Power: how can we reimagine government to make it fit for the multi-dimensional challenges of the mid-21st Century?
- Mission Critical: how can we translate mission-driven government from ambition into action?
- Impactful Devolution: how can government meaningfully and permanently devolve power to regional and local level in one of the most centralised countries in the world?
- Rebuilding the Nation: how can we utilise innovative models of public and private investment to spur growth and rebuild our crumbling infrastructure?
- Institutional Renewal: how can we rewire the state to ensure its institutions and people are fit to meet the challenges of the 21st century?
By prioritising these questions we are thinking about new progressive models of governance for the long term. Our working model is to convene experts and find ways in which we can bring perspectives from very different organisations together to suggest ways in which the ‘how’ of government could be more effective at every level.
About FGF’s In Power workstream
Ahead of the 2024 General Election, and the potential first transition from one UK governing party to another in 14 years, FGF’s Into Power series looked at how opposition parties prepare to enter office and enact their political programme. We spoke to the people who had worked for US President Joe Biden in 2020 and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in 20221, as well as those who were part of David Cameron’s team at the time of the 2010 UK General Election.2
A year on we are updating our workstream as In Power: looking at how the UK’s new progressive government can improve the operation of the state. Radical reform is required if Keir Starmer’s administration is to fulfil the promise of change on which it was elected. For this first report, we have begun at the very centre – the powers and teams that the Prime Minister himself has immediately to hand. It is clear that he needs a different set up from the one he inherited if he is to deliver wider change.
This work has already begun. On 1 September, the Prime Minister announced a wave of new appointments and a reshuffle of talent within the No.10 operation, marking what he has said will be a new phase for the government and a “relentless focus on delivery”3. The Prime Minister is now supported by a new ministerial Chief Secretary, while other senior hires bring more capabilities directly into No10. But a staffing shakeup alone will not be enough. To make a success of this reset at the top of Government, No10 must now get the details right. In Power 01: Transforming Downing Street sets out the organisational changes needed to ensure this new operation delivers for the Prime Minister.
During the course of the past eight months we have spoken – via roundtables, group discussions and one-to-one interviews – to over 100 expert contributors on this topic. These include people who work, or have worked, within the centre of government, in the UK and in other countries, those who interact with the centre from different parts of national or local government, who are experts in organisational psychology and design, and who have worked in roles at the top of large multinational corporations or complex civil society organisations. We have grounded our research in the extensive existing body of work on central government reform, not least the 2024 report of the Institute for Government’s (IfG’s) Commission on the Centre of Government 4.
The clear consensus is that the centre of government is not configured to serve the Prime Minister to deliver. Now, dovetailing with the Prime Minister’s recent announcements, we set out a detailed set of recommendations for a new, stronger, up-to-date Downing Street department for the Prime Minister. Reform to the centre of government was overdue before this Prime Minister took office. That change has already begun, but it now needs to be accompanied by the more thoroughgoing reforms we recommend if the Prime Minister is to have the operation he needs at hand to deliver.
We want to emphasise that the critique set out in this report is not aimed at individuals who are currently in either political or official roles at the centre of government. Our point is that it is the system and the model within which these people operate that is flawed, and has been for some time, and it is that system and operating model which needs reform. This is not a unique problem of a Labour government. But it is a Labour government that needs to fix it.