The term ‘technocracy’, or more often ‘technocrat’, is found everywhere. Both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are referred to as technocrats. But what exactly does it mean?

In the 15 years he served as prime minister, Lord Liverpool always put in the hours. He dutifully opened the latest despatches and read them in turn, though his delicate nature made him dread the task. He was scrupulously honest and always fair. He mastered the details. He was courteous towards colleagues and sensitive to their feelings. He was a devoted husband. He did not act rashly and sailed by no great ideological system. Had he lived today, Lord Liverpool would be what we might wincingly refer to as ‘a safe pair of hands’ or, worse, a ‘technocrat’. But the comparison ends when you consider what he worked towards.

When we think of technocracy today, we think of it as something post-ideological, prudent, scientific, expert-driven, and without illusion

Like many of his contemporaries, Lord Liverpool believed that his essential task in public life was the defence of the settlement of the Glorious Revolution – that is, the legal exclusion of Roman Catholics and Nonconformists from office and a voting franchise limited to around 2 per cent of the population. He wasn’t an ideologue; this was just something he took for granted. Sure, he was a technocrat – but a technocrat in service to a moral system we find unrecognisable.

When we think of technocracy today, we think of it as something post-ideological, prudent, scientific, expert-driven, and without illusion. But it also seems to imply a personal method, a kind of advanced form of conscientiousness. The term has been applied to some politicians not so much for any particular technical nous, but because they come across as quiet and understated. Often this is conscientiousness for its own sake – conscientiousness to no end. Theresa May, thought so technocratic that she was often depicted as a robot, grimly clung to office past all reason. Her final act was to enshrine our net zero commitments in law, hardly an act of pure reason. Rishi Sunak, we learn, stares endlessly at Excel spreadsheets meant for his juniors. So we find two related notions of technocracy: one is to do with means – politeness, diligence – and the other ends, the non-ideological pursuit of optimal outcomes.

The British establishment is often thought of as a technocratic one, though one that’s now menaced by its latter-day rival: ‘populism’. Any victory for orthodoxy is taken as a victory for technocracy. Each is taken as a shorthand for the other. When Truss’s short-lived plan to remove the independence of the Bank of England fell apart, it was seen as proof that rationality had won out – never mind that the Bank’s ability to set interest rates is about as old as Truss’s teenage daughters. When Sunak and Hunt succeeded her, all could say that the technocrats were back on top.

Opponents of the status quo take this idea at face value. Attacks on the social order established by New Labour in 1997 are almost always couched in opposition to technocracy. Technocracy, it’s said, can’t answer to emotional needs. It doesn’t speak to the small of the back. This kind of bloodless economism can’t satisfy the wish for community, higher purpose, or justice in society. Equally, there is now a folk defence of technocracy; a low moan for the adults in the room to take charge. Just think of Rory Stewart.

But Britain is not governed by technocratic methods or ideas. Few societies are less committed to rational optimisation, or hard realism, or bloodless economism. The British state in 2023 is a virulently ideological one. It is devoted – above all else – to a series of egalitarian moral claims, particularly those expressed in the Human Rights Act (1998) and the Equality Act (2010). When the rubber hits the road, these ideas always come first.

It is these moral commitments that determine the British state’s approach to any crisis. Consider Covid-19. Many worried that the decision to lock down the population was the inaugural act of a new amoral surveillance state – a true technocracy. But lockdown was an ideological exercise, not a bureaucratic one. It was premised on the idea that all human lives, no matter how many years remained to them, were of equal value. As ideas go it’s a romantic one, at odds with standard medical practice which observes the hard-headed principle of triage. This was a moral vision for society; it did not represent simple common sense. Lockdown – the most fiscally-significant event of the last decade – wasn’t an example of managerialism gone mad, but the enforcement of a very particular moral code.

Nor can it be said that we are governed by expert advice – another feature of technocracy. Few ages have been more willing to give experts the boot over doctrinal errors. Research scientists are no longer permitted to simply go where the evidence takes them. Academics who choose to investigate contentious subjects, be it transgenderism or differences between ethnicities, find their research curtailed. A society that really was governed by scientific principles wouldn’t smack around its leading talent in this way.

The same can be said of Whitehall. The civil service seldom hires outside its own ranks and ministers cannot be drawn from outside parliament. Again, the opening act of Britain’s Covid-19 response was to dump the existing pandemic plan, which had been drawn up by seasoned epidemiologists and civil servants. Britain is not governed according to expert advice but by rules, norms, and processes with spiritual connotations. Stakeholder analysis; the Nolan Principles of Public Life; the mysteries of the Ministerial Code – these are the great pillars of the Late Windsorite social order.

Lockdown – the most fiscally-significant event of the last decade – wasn’t an example of managerialism gone mad, but the enforcement of a very particular moral code

Britain’s economy, too, is hardly treated to technocratic methods. Local privileges are prized over development and override even the most critical national works. Britain’s governing classes are thrilled by stories of village halls coming together to thwart dodgy developers and have granted rewards of yet more local autonomy. Mass migration, the great constant of 21st-century Britain, also proceeds from a similar premise. It’s patently not a case of ruthless economic optimisation. We are reminded that the former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell lobbied for further immigration, not so much to provide British business with cheap labour, but rather to increase the total welfare of humanity writ large. A governing class solely interested in lower labour costs would make use of a work permit scheme with a limited timeframe. It cannot explain their readiness to give recent arrivals citizenship and the franchise. This isn’t economic calculation at work here, but a presumed universal Brotherhood of Man. Bloodless economism? Please.

Twenty-first century Britain is far from a technocracy. Again and again, the power in Britain is shown to lie in dogma, not in grey managerialism. The Britain of 2023 is a loose confederation of turbulent and mutinous Quangos: decentralised, romantic, sentimental.

The British establishment often worries that it comes across as too technocratic. But that worry provides them a frisson of pragmatism that is unearned. By styling itself as coldly realistic, Britain’s governing class can depict its enemies as quixotic, romantic, and doomed. This is spin. Bureaucrats, pragmatists, and general doers have existed under every system. But they all labour under certain ideological premises. Lord Liverpool suffered a stroke in 1827 and soon died. By 1832, the 1689 settlement he’d defended all his life had been abolished. England would have more prime ministers like him, but the England that produced his worldview had been completely repealed. In political life, the methods themselves are seldom our guide.