UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly threatened to "privatise the arse off" the Passport Agency recently for delivery failures at a Cabinet meeting on 26 April 2022.

Which is somewhat ironic as many of the Passport Agency's functions are already outsourced to private providers.

This is a reminder that debates are often driven more by ideology than pragmatic analysis of the facts. 1in 1987 Prof Barry Bozeman published a fascinating book entitled "All Organizations Are Public" which examined the complexities of organisational status. I am talked to him one eve of his retirement for RED TEAM.