The Regime Has Failed

Cummings Thesis (Feb 2025): Both major parties and Whitehall are in simultaneous crackup. A "Third Force" of constructive talent - brokered by external catalysts - is required to break the doom loop.

"We're on a path to serious internal violence and financial meltdown with pure Idiocracy 'in charge'. Without Third Force: get ready for riots and the IMF."

• Dominic Cummings, Feb 2025

The Stakes

Britain is not experiencing a normal political cycle. This is institutional failure across all three nodes of power:

• Conservatives: Sabotaged their 2019 mandate (record immigration despite promises), 14 years in power with zero structural reform delivered, lost trust of Reform voters through lies and broken promises
• Labour: Appointed architect of pandemic prep failure to lead reforms, £326bn spending boost with "implausible" 1.3% growth assumptions (IFS), cannot address immigration or cohesion without losing coalition
• Whitehall: "The Civil Service are the real enemy of hope for the future" - Sir John Hoskyns, architect of Thatcher's analytical framework

The old system's momentum has re-asserted itself. Starmer promised "change" yet presides over the same broken machinery.

The Third Force Thesis

A "Third Force" must recruit aggressively constructive talent from business, private research, and former armed forces - personalities effectively barred from SW1's obstructionist wordcel games.

Westminster makes it practically unlawful for builders to work there. The dominant personality type is "aggressively obstructionist, intensely mimetic, self-distracted to trivial word games & clueless about large organisations."

What is the Third Force?

Think Silicon Valley elites model (2023-24 US). An independent power bloc of builders, not politicians. Key characteristics:

• "Aggressively constructive" - Ron Conway's test: builders not blockers
• "Truth-seeking" - Li Lu, Charlie Munger: evidence over ideology
• "Talent-optimizing" - Bob Taylor: assembles high-performance teams
• From outside SW1 - business, private research, armed forces - NOT the Westminster talent pool

Super-Compressed Tokens

Simple truths that recur throughout history:

Bureaucracies Defend Power

Bureaucracies will prioritise defending their powers even when pathological. Without willingness to remove people fast, you have no leverage.

Experience < Getting Things Done

In jobs like No10, experience of politics matters less than experience getting difficult things done. SW1 selects against this.

Pile Work to Find Key Men

"You find your key men by piling work on them. They say 'I can't do any more' and you say 'Sure you can'. Pretty soon you have men you can rely on absolutely." - Kaiser

Speed Beats Perfection

WW2 rule: Get something 80% right fast rather than 100% right too late. Britain's crisis needs wartime urgency, not peacetime process.

System Beats Personality

Individual talent matters, but talent without systems thinking fails. Thatcher succeeded partly because Hoskyns built the analytical framework.

The Hoskyns Precedent (1977-1982)

Sir John Hoskyns, an entrepreneur with zero political experience, created the analytical framework that enabled Thatcher's regime change. His memoir Just In Time shows how outsiders can crack open a broken system.

Key lessons:

• Built "causal wiring diagram" connecting all Britain's problems systematically
• Recruited from business, not politics - experience doing difficult things
• Civil Service identified as "real enemy of hope" - institutional capture recognised
• Warning: "Long march back through semi-socialist institutions never happened"

The 2016-2020 project stalled. The old system's momentum re-asserted itself.

Why Merger is Hard

The prospects for a Tory-Reform deal are much lower than many Tories assume. Hate and distrust run deep.

Requirements for success:

1. Third Force emerges as independent power bloc (not just noise)
2. External broker with credibility across factions (Trump/Musk model)
3. Constructive personalities recruited from outside SW1
4. Clear break with failed 2019-2024 Tory leadership

Reality check: Much of "the right" in SW1 would rather stay failing than take the painful steps required. They'd leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF.

The Rule of Three: WW2 Production Model

By 1942, war production followed a predictable pattern: output triples in year one, jumps 7x by year two. This wasn't magic - it was systems thinking, builder empowerment, and ruthless prioritisation.

Applied to British reform:

• Housing: Triple completions via grey belt unlock, standardised designs
• Energy: 7x grid connections through First Ready, First Connected
• Planning: Reduce decision time from years to months
• NHS: Neighbourhood NHS rollout at wartime speed

What would a serious British regime do? Respect, treasure, empower builders. Remove blockers fast.

Realignment Pathway

Step 1: Third Force Emergence (Emerging)

Silicon Valley elites model (2023-24 US). Independent power bloc of builders, not politicians.

Step 2: External Brokerage (Speculative)

External catalysts (Trump/Elon model) broker deal between Tories, Reform, and Third Force talent.

Step 3: Talent Recruitment (Required)

Recruit aggressively constructive personalities from business, research, armed forces - NOT SW1.

Step 4: Regime Replacement (Goal)

New coalition implements Hoskyns-style analytical framework with wartime urgency.

What You Can Do

"If you want British politics to have a better chance of escaping its farce, probably the main thing you can do is help the Third Force do what Monnet called 'preparing the future'."

The dashboard is the map. Essays are the mission orders. You need a high-frequency way to inject the "Third Force" thesis into the bloodstream of your target audience - the high-agency 1% - without waiting for complex visualizations.

This is your recruitment filter.

Further Reading

• Just In Time by Sir John Hoskyns - The only post-1979 British book showing how regime change actually happens
• TSP-5: What comes in 2025-6 by Dominic Cummings - Party crackup analysis and Third Force merger mechanics
• People, Ideas, Machines XIV by Dominic Cummings - WW2 production lessons, Hoskyns case study, super-compressed tokens
• Party Crackup Thread - Real-time analysis of simultaneous Tory/Labour/Whitehall crackup

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This essay distills insights from Dominic Cummings' analysis of Britain's political realignment crisis, the Hoskyns precedent for outsider-led regime change, and the WW2 production model for rapid reform delivery.