As Labour’s new Ministers settle into Government, many will be experiencing the same steep learning curve that Damian Green and his colleagues faced in 2010. The transition from Opposition to Government is brutal. No matter how long a politician has spent preparing policy in Opposition, nothing quite prepares them for the reality of running a Whitehall Department—battling the Civil Service, navigating the Treasury’s iron grip on spending, and dealing with a political system that reshuffles Ministers before they’ve even had a chance to master their brief.

Damian Green has been through it all. A veteran of multiple Departments, he served as Minister of State for Immigration, Policing and Criminal Justice, and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, before becoming First Secretary of State and Minister for the Cabinet Office under Theresa May. Now, as Chair of the Social Care Foundation and Adviser to PLMR, he reflects on what it really takes to govern—and what Labour’s new Ministers are likely experiencing today.

Going from Opposition to Government: A System Unprepared for Change

For all the years spent preparing policy in Opposition, the transition into Government is strikingly unstructured. While Shadow Ministers spend time meeting stakeholders and developing ideas, there is no formal training to prepare them for the realities of running a Department.

“Before 2010, we were expecting to win, so we weren’t just going through the motions. There were general conversations about what we wanted to do, but there was little structured preparation. The one genuinely useful part of the process was a day’s training organised by the Institute for Government. Andrew Adonis, a former Labour Minister, gave us practical advice—how to manage Ministerial boxes, how to interact with officials. In hindsight, it was the best preparation we had.”

The sheer scale of the transition is difficult to grasp. One day, an MP is running a small office with a couple of advisors. The next, they are handed control of multi-billion-pound budgets and thousands of civil servants.

“I started the day as an MP with a budget of £100,000 for staff. By the end of the day, I was responsible for £9 billion and 10,000 people. That’s the jump we expect Ministers to make, and we do nothing to prepare them for it.”

Green had an advantage many Ministers don’t—he had spent years shadowing the immigration brief before becoming Immigration Minister. He knew the policy inside out. But many of his colleagues weren’t so lucky.

“Plenty of people walk into Ministerial jobs knowing absolutely nothing about the subject, let alone how to run a Department. If you did that in any other organisation, you’d have to pass exams, go through training, prove you could do the job. In Government, you just get appointed because they need a woman, or someone from the north, or someone from the left or right of the party. The only question that should matter is: can this person do the job?”

For Labour’s new intake, the experience will be much the same. Some will be stepping into jobs they have shadowed for years, while others will find themselves in Departments they barely considered during their time in Opposition. Regardless of their background, they will all face the same reality—figuring it out on the job, with little guidance and no time to adjust.

Ministers Versus Civil Servants: A Battle for Control

If stepping into Government is chaotic, running a Department is even more so. Ministers come in with ideas, but the system is designed to outlast them. The Civil Service doesn’t always resist change outright—but it has its own way of slowing things down.

“One of the most interesting things I discovered in the Home Office was that the civil servants had a whole team working on an immigration bill they assumed we’d want to pass. I kept saying, ‘No, we don’t need new legislation.’ But they kept going for nine months before finally shutting it down. I only found out a year later that they’d kept working on it behind the scenes, assuming they’d wear me down eventually.”

This isn’t just about Ministers being blocked—it’s about a deep cultural gap between politicians and the Civil Service. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Civil Service’s attitude towards Parliament.

“I was amazed at how little civil servants understood about why Parliament matters. I had to set up a series of talks in the Home Office to explain to them why I cared about it so much. I told them, ‘In half an hour, a bad answer to an Urgent Question can cost me my job. That’s the fastest way to lose a Ministerial position. That’s why I take it seriously. That’s why you should too.’”

Yet many Departments simply don’t operate with Parliament in mind. Green recalls visiting  one part of the Home Office which barely interacted with Ministers because, at the time, it was running smoothly.

“I turned up and said, ‘When you write a submission, I need it to be two pages and crystal clear.’ They looked at me in disbelief. ‘But we only send you something every three months,’ they said. ‘Yes,’ I told them, ‘which is why I need it to be two pages and clear, because I’m dealing with 20 other crises every night.’ They just didn’t understand what a Minister’s workload actually looked like.”

The Importance of Ideology: Governing with a North Star

A fundamental problem many Governments face is that, once in power, they become reactive rather than proactive. Without a clear ideological framework, Ministers can end up making a series of individual decisions that seem rational at the time—but cumulatively, they take the Government in a direction far removed from the platform it was elected on.

“If you spend ten years just solving problems as they arise, you stop governing with a clear purpose. You make one decision here, another there, and each makes sense in isolation. But when you step back, you realise you’ve drifted from your original vision. That’s what happened to us in Government.”

During his time in office, Green saw how events drive decision-making. The need to respond to crises—be it economic shocks, public service failures, or international events—inevitably takes priority. But without a set of ideological principles guiding decision-making, Governments risk being shaped by circumstances rather than shaping them.

“Take austerity. George Osborne had a clear ideological drive—he wanted to shrink the state. You might agree or disagree, but it gave the Government a sense of purpose. By the time we got to Boris Johnson, that had disappeared. We weren’t governing with a clear vision; we were reacting to problems. Then COVID hit, and we suddenly had a Conservative Government pouring billions into the economy and expanding the role of the state—exactly the opposite of what we had claimed to stand for a decade earlier.”

This is a challenge Labour will face too. Ministers will have come in with big ideas—but how many of them will survive contact with the reality of governing? How many will be traded away in response to short-term crises?

“If you don’t hold onto an ideological framework, you end up governing like a technocrat. Every decision is just about solving the next problem, and before you know it, you’ve drifted far from the manifesto you were elected on.”

Too Many Centres of Government—and the Treasury Problem

Perhaps the biggest problem of all is that there are simply too many power centres in Government. No one is ever quite sure who is really in charge.

“There’s Number 10, there’s the Treasury, and there’s the Cabinet Office. That’s three competing centres of power, all jostling for control. I’d just absorb the Cabinet Office into Number 10. The old distinction—that Number 10 is for politics and the Cabinet Office is just machinery of Government—doesn’t work anymore. It’s outdated.”

But the real centre of power in Government isn’t only Number 10—it’s the Treasury. And Green is clear: unless you challenge Treasury orthodoxy, you can’t govern effectively.

“The Treasury is the most powerful institution in Whitehall. It’s full of incredibly clever people. And the only way to win an argument with them is to not accept their premises. Because once you do that, they’ll always win.”

What is that premise? That keeping public spending under control matters more than anything else—even more than long-term investment in infrastructure or economic growth.

“That’s why Britain doesn’t go broke—but it’s also why we have lousy infrastructure. Every Chancellor, no matter how radical they start out, eventually gets swallowed by Treasury orthodoxy. They start prioritising fiscal rules over everything else. And it means that even if a Government says it wants growth, the Treasury doesn’t actually prioritise it.”

One way to change this is for Chancellors to stay in post long enough to develop their own institutional memory.

“When Nigel Lawson was Chancellor, he had been there longer than anyone in the room. When a Treasury official said, ‘Why don’t we do this?’ he could say, ‘No, you suggested that to me three years ago, and I said no then.’ That’s why he was effective—because he had the experience to push back.”

Labour’s Challenge and the Lessons for the Conservatives

As Labour’s new Ministers wrestle with the realities of Government, the coming months will test their ability to hold onto their priorities, push back against the Civil Service when necessary, and resist being consumed by the daily firefighting of Whitehall. Every Government comes in with a vision, but only those that understand the machinery of Government can turn that vision into reality.

But if Labour Ministers are learning these lessons now, Conservatives must also take note. One of the striking realities of the past 14 years is that many senior Conservatives have never been in Opposition before. For nearly a decade and a half, they have governed, often without fully appreciating how difficult it is to impose change from the outside. Now, as they adjust to Opposition, they will need to understand the obstacles they failed to overcome in power—and prepare themselves for the challenges they will face if and when they return to Government.