“The Blob”, that perennial spectre of Conservative party governance, takes its name from a 1950s B-Movie about an unstoppable amoeba-like mass which devours everything in its path. “There is no stopping The Blob as it spreads from town to town”, the trailer for the forgotten flick explains. Leading man Steve McQueen — in his first major role — is called upon to do battle.
Today, “The Blob” is better known for its battles with ministers as its spreads from department to department. It is a relatively recent discursive innovation, designed to capture the worst vestiges of Britain’s saboteur class of ravening quangos, courts, civil servants, academics and unions for whom rightwards reform must be unerringly resisted.
Still, the political genealogy of the term is contested. Some credit its application in Westminster to Michael Gove during his stint as education secretary, others to his éminence grise Dominic Cummings. Former Times journalist Mark Edwards recently staked his own claim as the Blob’s intellectual progenitor — he has penned a letter to the Guardian arguing he first coined the phrase in the early 2000s.
However, it seems the first to baptise supposed deep-state obstructionism as “The Blob” was William Bennett, America’s education secretary from 1985-88. Bureaucratic idleness is apparently a transatlantic phenomenon.
Michael Gove vs. ‘The Blob’ (2010-2014)
Whatever its origins, “The Blob” term was first popularised in British political discourse during Michael Gove’s tenure as education secretary from 2010-2014.
Gove, who championed academies and free schools, was ever-quick to lampoon his critics in the schools bureaucracy and their supposed “progressive” grip over teacher training, classroom standards and qualifications.
For the then-education secretary, a modern-day McQueen, the hypothesised blobberati was drawn out from the shadows by his mission to restructure primary and secondary-school national curricula in England. As secretary of state, Gove argued that a major overhaul of syllabuses was needed because education had been undermined by left-wing “ideologues”.
“These ideologues may have been inspired by generous ideals but the result of their approach has been countless children condemned to a prison house of ignorance”, Gove told the Conservative party conference in 2010.
For his troubles, Gove was removed as education secretary in 2014 and replaced by former Treasury minister Nicky Morgan in a wide-ranging cabinet reshuffle. Gove became chief whip in what was viewed as a snubbing by the Cameron regime.
Owen Paterson vs. “The [Green] Blob” (c. 2014)
In 2014, Owen Paterson (best known in recent times for his starring role in “Patersongate”) launched a vitriolic campaign against the “powerful, self-serving” environmental lobby — which he termed the “Green Blob” — following Cameron’s decision to sack him as environment secretary.
In a lengthy opinion piece for the Sunday Telegraph, Paterson described his caucus of climate foes as a “mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape”.
The “Green Blob” is a “tangled triangle of unelected busybodies” who claim to “have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart” but only seek to profit from climate-related moral outrage, he explained.
In his piece for the Telegraph, Paterson was particularly scathing about the Green party and ecological group Friends of the Earth. “It was not my job to do the bidding of two organisations that are little more than anti-capitalist agitprop groups, most of whose leaders could not tell a snake’s head fritillary from a silver-washed fritillary”, he outlined.
Paterson’s solution was to “rip up” the 2008 Climate Change Act — a cause he championed in a speech to the Tufton Street-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) following his sacking.
Brexiteers vs. “The Blob” (2016)
The present war on the civil service arguably has its origins in the Brexit battles that dominated UK politics in the 2016 referendum and its immediate aftermath.
The Vote Leave campaign was fronted by Boris Johnson and Blob-basher Michael Gove; of course, pulling the strings behind the scenes was Dominic Cummings, who many credit with Gove’s tilt against obstructionist educationalists from (2010-2014).
Conversely, on the Remain side was the full might of the treasury, whose warnings of recession and a surge in unemployment were dismissed by the Leave campaigners.
People have “had enough of experts”, Gove insisted in the referendum campaign.
Liz Truss vs. “The Blob” (c.2018 – 2022)
In 2018, then-chief secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss gave a speech to the London School of Economics (LSE), which criticised overregulation and took aim, curiously, at Michael Gove’s policies as environment secretary.
“Too often we’re hearing about not drinking too much, eating too many doughnuts or enjoying the warm glow of our wood-burning Goves — I mean stoves”, Truss joked. After an eight-year-long struggle, had “The Blob” absorbed its fiercest foe?
Truss also criticised demands from the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, for more cash for his department. She told her LSE audience: “We have to recognise that it’s not macho just to demand more money. It’s much tougher to demand better value and challenge the blob of vested interests within your department”.
The brevity of Liz Truss’ tenure as tax-cutter-in-chief has also been blamed on the conniving actions of “The Blob”. Following her defenestration as PM, Truss has accused a wide range of actors — political and otherwise — of standing in her way.
“I assumed upon entering Downing Street that my mandate would be respected and accepted. How wrong I was. While I anticipated resistance to my programme from the system, I underestimated the extent of it”, she detailed in a sit-down with Spectator TV.
Dominic Raab vs. “The Blob” (2023)
When Dominic Raab resigned as deputy prime minister in April 2023, a series of sympathetic opinion pieces took aim at a familiar culprit.
“Dominic Raab’s exit is a victory for the Blob”, read one UnHerd piece; “Raab’s departure is a triumph for the Blob – and a lesson in how to be a modern minister”, held ConservativeHome; “Raab has become latest victim of the Blob — I fear he won’t be the last says”, had one opinion piece in the Express.
The almost instinctual, semi-synchronised assault on Whitehall “groupthink” was truly something to behold.
Of course, this was a narrative of events unsubtly encouraged by the man himself. Writing for the Telegraph — Owen Paterson-style — Raab railed against his resignation, labelling it “Kafkaesque”.
Brexiteers vs. “The Blob” —round two (April 2023)
Following Rishi Sunak’s full-scale retreat over the EU retained law bill — which means only 600 EU laws will be scrapped in the UK by the end of the year, not 4,000 — Brexiteers took aim once more at the “Blob”.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, who drew up the original retained law bill, declared: “The blob has triumphed”. “The written ministerial statement breaks the prime minister’s clear promise to review or appeal all EU laws in his first hundred days”, he said.
Dominic Raab, intervening from the backbenches in a commons urgent question, urged business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch to “resist the resistance in Whitehall” to the government’s retained EU law proposals.
Suella Braverman vs. “The Blob” (March 2023 – present)
In the wake of Braverman’s speeding mishaps, the seeds of a narrative around an obstructionist “Blob” and snivelling civil servants were scattered once more. (That Braverman’s speeding woes are thought to have entered the pages of the Times via a civil servant certainly fits the narrative perfectly).
But this wasn’t Braverman’s first run-in with “The Blob”. Two months ago an email sent in her name to Conservative supporters blamed “an activist blob of leftwing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour party” for the government’s failure to stop Channel crossings. The home secretary later disowned the email, but the episode is nonetheless illustrative of strained home office-“Blob” relations.
Following news that Rishi Sunak will not open an investigation into Braverman’s handling of her speeding fine, it seems the home secretary lives to battle “The Blob” another day.
Boris Johnson vs. “The Blob” (May 2023 – present)
The news that Boris Johnson has been referred to the police by the cabinet office over new allegations of rule-breaking during the pandemic has prompted a further round of Blob-Conservative warfare.
“There is now an open witch hunt against right wingers in the Conservative Party. The leadership of the party must shut this down immediately”, one top Conservative told the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope.
“I didn’t really believe in the ‘blob’ till now. But the events of the last few days — the repeated briefing against Suella and now tonight’s action against Boris — are beginning to make me think again”, said another.
According to the Express, deputy prime minister and key Rishi Sunak ally Oliver Dowden, who has been in charge of the Cabinet Office since October, is thought to be a Blob co-conspirator. The deputy prime minister is “a compliant tool of the blob”, one Johnson ally told the paper.
Logic vs. “The Blob” (∞)
There is an inherent intellectual instability to “The Blob” trope. It is argued, on the one hand, that it is a malicious, organised and lethally-effective cabal, and on the other, that it is idle and unable to act decisively on ministerial directive.
It is also so eclectic and broad-ranging, that any references to it are increasingly meaningless. Members of “The Blob” cited in this article include: educationalists, environmentalists, the Green party, unions, Michael Gove and Oliver Dowden. The more the blob expands, the less coherent the argument against it becomes.
Ultimately, governing is hard for the Conservatives right now. The party is tired, cabinet ministers are freelancing, internal factions are poised, its popularity has waned and its mandate is questioned. The populist logic of an obstructionist officialdom is, in the end, probably the natural consequence of the Conservatives’ recent travails.
