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Here is an entirely plausible scenario that could emerge after the next general election in the UK. Nigel Farage and Reform win a parliamentary majority. But upon entering office they soon find their plans for government are thwarted.

Rank-and-file civil servants go on strike. Senior civil servants publicly declare they are willing to help the new government while diluting and delaying its work behind the scenes. Countless civil servants leak embarrassing details and stories to their allies in legacy media. The machinery of government slows down, if not grinds to a halt.

Democratically-elected Reform MPs find they are unable to change anything. The people, exasperated with the paralysis in Westminster, turn away from not just Reform but democracy itself. Their one attempt to change the system, their one attempt to push Britain in a different direction, has failed.

Public support for Reform and public trust in the entire system collapse. What began as an energetic populist revolt is gradually but relentlessly worn down until it becomes lifeless, rudderless, incompetent, and remarkably unpopular.

This scenario, I suggest to you, is not just plausible – it is highly likely.

In fact, it is already underway.

Academic ‘experts’ on the civil service are already talking about the civil service engaging in ‘guerilla government’ against a democratically-elected government they do not like — such as by shirking, leaking, and whistleblowing.

Trade unions that represent civil servants are already openly debating going on strike if Reform does win the next general election.

The same state that did all it could to delay and dilute Brexit, in other words, will inevitably do all it can to try and undermine Reform’s populist insurgency, supported by its allies in legacy media and the university class.

Which is why something very important happened this week — even though many people missed it. For the first time in British politics, an insurgent party that is on course to enter government acknowledged a crucial point: winning elections is no longer enough. Winning power through the ballot box is no longer enough.

In a striking new policy paper, titled ‘Fixing the Centre’, Reform UK makes it crystal clear that if the British people really want to take back control of their country and push it in a fundamentally different direction then they must not only win the next general election but confront what lies behind democratic politics.

Whether we call it The Blob, The Establishment, The Managerial State, The Deep State, The State Bureaucracy, or – as I like to call it – The Regime, what we’re talking about is a deeply entrenched, highly coordinated, and permanent class of state administrators and bureaucrats who continue to govern the country irrespective of who wins power at democratic elections.

Just look at the UK.

In the last ten years alone, the state civil service ballooned from roughly 384,000 people to some 550,000. The share of senior civil servants who wield enormous influence over policy has rocketed from 60 to 75 per cent.

As Reform MP Danny Kruger points out, the Cabinet Office, which sits at the heart of government, now employs a staggering 11,000 staff. That’s more than twice the number in 2010 and one third of the size of the Royal Navy.

Today, furthermore, there are somewhere between 300 and 800 public bodies, or ‘Arm’s Length Public Bodies’, which employ roughly 400,000 full-time staff, and which, in turn, are surrounded by an entire industry of non-governmental organisations, charities, foundations, research councils, and lobbyists, none of which are democratically elected but all of which shape the general direction of travel.

Last year, one think-tank estimated there are now nearly 500 ‘quasi-non-governmental organisations’ operating in the UK that received nearly £400 billion in direct funding from the government and billions more from non-governmental sources.

Today, nearly one-third of all government spending lies beyond day-to-day control of government ministers and democratically-elected MPs. Just think about that.

And of the many thousands of people who staff The Regime and its various satellites – the civil service, the universities, charities, foundations, legacy media, and more – an estimated 75 per cent, according to one survey, identify with the political left.

As Danny Kruger wrote in The Times this week: “The fact is that real power is held not by the elected government but by the permanent civil service, especially the cabinet secretary and the sprawling, incoherent bureaucracy of the Cabinet Office.”

And while he did not say it, most of the people who operate this permanent state are politically opposed to what a large majority of voters in this country want to see. So, make no mistake: a political battle is most definitely coming.

Which is why the new plans, outlined by Reform UK, to fundamentally change the underlying machinery of government, are important. They want to radically overhaul the way government works.

By curbing the power of the Cabinet Office. By scrapping the role of Cabinet Secretary. By dramatically reforming the civil service, including by reducing its size and rewriting the Civil Service Code.

By giving government ministers the right and power to sack civil servants who block their democratically-elected agenda, perform poorly, or threaten to go on strike. By weakening the grip of civil servants and distant, unaccountable, unelected bodies.

By creating a much more powerful Office of the Prime Minister, surrounding the prime minister with strong and loyal political appointments who can not only ensure promises made to voters are delivered but that The Regime does not takeover.

And, ultimately, by restoring the influence of the people over a Regime that has now become fully insulated from democratic pressures. Because the blunt reality is that, today, across the West …

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… large swathes of our national life are no longer controlled by the people.

Mass immigration continues irrespective of widespread public opposition. Courts interpret laws in ways that run directly against the wishes of the people. And policies such as Digital ID or scrapping jury trials are suddenly introduced and imposed with absolutely no democratic consent.

This is why, in the mid-2000s, academics such as Peter Mair warned that the age of mass democracy, where citizens could influence their nations, was coming to an end.

Politics, he warned, was transforming into a professional, insular, remote cartel that is managerial, technocratic, and, above all, fully insulated from the people below.

Over time, helped by the proliferation of supranational institutions that now operate above the nation-state, the Regime has accumulated more and more power, becoming a self-reinforcing ecosystem with remarkably little accountability or scrutiny.

This is why despite a change of government the overall direction of travel remains the same. And this is why so many people in the West feel so utterly disillusioned, angry, and frustrated with a dreary status-quo that never seems to change, no matter who they vote for.

On the one hand, people are told they live in a free and democratic society. But, on the other, when it comes to the issues that matter most to them – the security of their borders, population, identity, culture, and sovereignty – the change they desire never arrives because the Regime does not want this change.

What President Trump recognised through the experience of his first term in office, and what the likes of Reform UK and national populists in Europe now recognise, too, is what the political realignment in the West is really all about. It is no longer simply between new populist movements and the older established parties. It is now between the people and the Regime that floats above them and beyond their reach.

Reform UK is right to recognise this reality and develop some initial plans for dealing with it, for reclaiming power from The Regime. But the party must go much further.

It should outline plans to not only redraw the machinery of government but dramatically slash the power and influence of a sprawling network of non-governmental bodies, charities and foundations, legal bodies and courts.

It should develop plans to fundamentally reform higher education, including the research councils and bodies that implicitly shape the direction of policy and the national conversation. And it should continue to outline ways to dramatically weaken and overhaul the influence of the Regime that lies between what the people want and the grim reality they are forced to live with, no matter who they elect.

Because the truth is this: unless the Regime is confronted and dismantled the people will never be able to reform the institutions, remove unaccountable and distant bureaucracies, reassert their own popular sovereignty, and reestablish control over the their own country. Until this happens, election victories will only ever be temporary, symbolic, and futile. Nothing will ever change, except the people’s trust and belief in democracy itself. And that would lead us down a very dangerous path indeed.