Keir Starmer needs to learn one huge lesson from Donald Trump to help fix UK

The Labour government and, according to the polls, most of the UK, are so spectacularly opposed to Donald Trump that even one of his obviously excellent ideas will be dismissed as fascist, Nazi, cruel, evil or bullying. Take your pick.

What a shame. Because in appointing Elon Musk to co-lead a government efficiency department, Trump has gifted the UK an initiative that has so much merit it's positively covered in gold stars.

What will Musk do? He'll use an entrepreneurial approach to cut government spending, with a free hand to do things differently. Stones will be upturned to see what crawls out. The good things will be nurtured and the bad sent packing.

I reckon he could be hugely successful. After all, a man capable of commercialising electric cars, sending rockets into space and overhauling one of the world's biggest social media companies, all within the space of a few years, is hardly likely to be intimidated by entrenched interest groups.

My God just how badly does the UK need a bit of that spirit. Frankly, it's a shame we can't get Musk himself, because he sounds like just the sort of no-nonsense bloke we need.

And why should we take a carving knife to government waste? Where do we start? Tax is at an all-time high. So is borrowing, which means even more tax. National productivity, particularly in the public sector, is an embarrassment. By the end of the decade, we'll be spending £100 billion a year (nearly as much as the entire education budget) on sickness and disability benefits, reflecting a huge rise since Covid in the number of people apparently too ill to work. This year, we'll spend £100 billion on interest payments on the national debt. We've just given a stonking pay rise to train drivers who've spent much of the year on strike and who already get paid about twice as much as nurses. We give aid to nuclear-armed India.

Just last week, we heard that £100million is being spent on building a "shed" to protect bats from HS2 trains. The Labour government is going to spend yet more to set up teeth-cleaning classes for children. It can take months to get a new passport, such is the post-Covid backlog. According to the Taxpayers' Alliance, MOD chiefs have spent £4million on on hotels and fast food, and the NHS has spent a further £1.5 million on what's been called "quack cures", including Indian head massages.

The waste is obvious, disgusting and inexcusable. But if you reckon Whitehall will sort it out, don't hold your breath. Big government is programmed to procreate. Perhaps that's why Keir Starmer has asked the little-known David Goldstone, from, you guessed it, the public sector, to head up the new "Office for Value for Money". I don't wish ill on Goldstone, but he ain't no Elon Musk.

Is it any surprise, then, that Britain's growth forecast for the next few years is dismal, and will see us chugging along in the slow lane while other countries zoom past us? When the nanny state spends more and more, the result is that it taxes more and more. There really is no mystery, though the present government seems incapable of understanding.

A UK version of Elon Musk to head up a department of efficiency is a no-brainer. Let's just follow the US. But, sadly, it's also about as likely to happen as Starmer, Lammy and Trump holidaying together in a B&B in Bognor.