Readers' Letters: Farage's UK Doge is a hollow gimmick for hollow times

Nigel Farage, that perennial opportunist of British politics, has now called for the creation of an Elon Musk-style “Department of Government Efficiency” (Doge) across the local councils under his sway.

One must admire the sheer audacity of the branding – invoking the meme-currency frivolity of “Doge” while pretending to wage war on bureaucratic bloat. But let us not mistake this for a genuine crusade against waste. It is, rather, a calculated propaganda manoeuvre, designed not to uncover inefficiency but to legitimise yet another round of punitive austerity.

Elon Musk’s own Doge experiment in the United States has been nothing short of a calamity. With characteristic bombast, Musk declared he would excise a staggering $2 trillion from the federal budget, as if government expenditure were so much deadwood awaiting his chainsaw. Yet, where did he begin his pruning? Not, as any rational observer might expect, with the Pentagon – an institution that has failed seven consecutive audits and cannot account for trillions – but with the usual soft targets: child cancer research, nuclear weapons safety scientists, Ebola prevention studies and air traffic controllers.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has promised 'Doge Lincolnshire' in reference to the government-slashing Department of Government Efficiency in the US, headed by Elon Musk. (Picture: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

The result? After all the fanfare, Musk’s claimed savings amount to a paltry $150 billion – just over 2 per cent of the federal budget, a figure many economists dismiss as fantasy, suggesting the real number is closer to $15bn. In other words, a rounding error dressed up as revolution.

That Farage believes he can replicate this charade in Britain speaks volumes about the political moment we inhabit. The ground for such demagoguery has been prepared by the utter capitulation of the Labour Party and the trade unions, who long ago abandoned any serious defence of the working class. Into this vacuum steps Farage, peddling his usual cocktail of social despair and immigrant scapegoating, directing anger away from the real architects of Britain’s decline – the financial parasites, the property speculators, the architects of deindustrialisation – and towards those with the least power.

Farage’s Doge proposal is but another symptom our decayed political landscape – a hollow gimmick for hollow times. The real waste, the real fraud, is not in local council budgets but in the very system that permits such charlatans to pose as reformers while the country burns.

Alan Hinnrichs, Dundee

Swinney failed

Normally, advice to a political party to propose policies and ideas that will “resonate with voters” would be a great start, as long as it's followed up by “...and are sensible solutions to acknowledged problems, and they and are willing and able to deliver”. The fact is we've had 18 years of policies and ideas from the SNP that either didn't see the light of day (more police, teachers and doctors, national oil company and cheaper energy), or failed (gender, hate crime, Ferguson shipyard, deposit return, fibre, “judge me on my education record”), the last of which got five years of the John Swinney kiss of death and a legacy of violence, plummeting standards and a spate of teacher resignations.

This record is also the main reason for the failure that will go down in history – they didn't deliver independence.

If Reform's 2026 campaign theme is to remove the current government and highlight 18 wasted years, the SNP is an unmissable target. John Swinney failed and the other mainstream party leaders should follow suit, fortified, if possible, by the aforementioned policies and ideas that will “resonate with voters” that they have never produced up till now.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Defending Scotland

Labour MP Graeme Downie (your report, 5 May) has demonstrated, oh so ably, the strategic faultline on which his party stands. A faultline which, while not yet as wide as the Great Glen, will stretch and ultimately doom Scottish Labour to fall into the chasm below.

He, like so many of his English counterparts, conflates the UK with a country, in his challenge to the SNP, which it patently is not. He conveniently ignores the fact that no part of defence is devolved to Holyrood and that Scotland is prohibited from negotiating on its own behalf in these matters.

Perceived failures in the UK policy towards Russia are a product of UK Defence policy over the 40 years since the mid-1980s.

Defending the High North, as Mr Downie would term it, is nothing new – the Iceland/Faroes Gap has shaped Nato’s maritime defence posture for decades. The adequacy of the UK’s response has been on a downward spiral since the aforementioned mid-80s. This is clearly highlighted when comparing written answers in Hansard as to the strength of Scotland-based military forces in December 1988 – over 100 bases in 1988 reduced to fewer than 20 now.

Nothing demonstrates this better than the halving of regular battalions in the Royal Regiment of Scotland from six to three in the less than 20 years since it was formed.

In sum, when an independent Scotland designs its Armed Forces they will be balanced, tailored to her needs and forward-looking, meeting the threat of modern warfare through resilient energy infrastructure, commercial and military cyber security and new alliances with trusted and likeminded allies. Hopefully, politicians such as Mr Downie will take advice and listen to someone who is better informed than they appear to be.

Rob Thompson CBE, Commodore Royal Navy (retired), Limekilns, Fife

Subdued day

I cannot help but contrast the scenes of celebration of VE Day on 5 May with my personal recollections of the event as a schoolboy left in 1939 to board in a rural school in Scotland. We assembled in the school hall, there was a prayer of thanks and a metric psalm was sung (“I to the hills will lift mine eyes”) and young and old then trooped down to the burn which ran through the town to pick up the largest stone we could carry to the top of the hill which dominated the school, where a cairn was built.

It is still there, though few may remember what it commemorates. I recall no triumphalism, for the war was far from over and no one thought beating Japan would be easy, and the restricted life we led did not change. It may be that it is easier to celebrate such events with abandon the more distant they are.

James Scott, Edinburgh

Orkney memories

The Scotsman’s article on the role played by Orkney during the Second World War (5 May) brought up a few nostalgic memories as I was brought up there as a small boy during those momentous years.

Orkney at that time was full of uniformed servicemen, the narrow streets of Kirkwall and Stromness resounded to huge army trucks thundering along, off-duty servicemen were adopted by local families where they helped with farm work in return for proper home cooking.

I can recall the weaving searchlights and bursting anti aircraft fire going off over Scapa Flow, whether for real or a practice I know not, and a fleeting glimpse of King George VI passing by on his way to inspect his fleet in a very hush hush visit.

Finally, on 8 May 1945, I remember helping to construct an effigy of Adolf Hitler, which was dragged around before being burnt on a huge bonfire.

Childhood memories, but well worth recalling.

Sandy Macpherson, Edinburgh

Parade question

I enjoyed the VE 80 Military Parade on Monday. However, as a small detachment of Ukrainian troops marched, incongruously, along, behind their flag, to cheering, did no one at the BBC nor the armed services ask the uncomfortable question: which side was Ukraine on in the Second World War?

Ukraine was just as divided, as they are today, and their forces carried out the murder of 100,000 Poles in Galicia. They should not have been in the parade.

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing, Fife

Four score

The Scotsman’s sister newspaper the Edinburgh Evening News carried an article about the refurbishment of the North Bridge roadway in the city (6 May). Among the various facts accompanying the article is that the cost was four times that original estimated. This caught my eye as in The Scotsman of 2 May, a letter from SR Wild had reached the conclusion that whenever a cost is given it will invariably be four times as much as quoted.

Someone seems to be better at quantifying costs than certain government officials.

C Lowson, Fareham, Hants

New Pence needed

Mike Pence, the vice president in Donald Trump's first term in office, single handedly defused the Trump supporters' insurrection of Capitol Hill in the infamous 6 January 2021 incident which cost 11 lives (your report, 6 May). He thus saved a fragile American democracy, which threatened to collapse into a Trump dictatorship, and fully deserves the JF Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his decisive action. Whether the 1,500 insurrectionists deserve their pardon by Trump is quite another matter.

Tragically, few have learned lessons from these scary events, not least Donald Trump himself. Largely bypassing Congress, he governs through a tight clique of oligarchs, headed by Elon Musk, and a yes man vice president, JD Vance. What is needed is a second Mike Pence to stand up to him, in order to protect, and even save, the US constitution.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

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