When another government fails to do what it promised, we usually blame the ministers. Sometimes they deserve it. They may not understand their brief, they may leave before learning it, or they may care more about announcing something than making it work.
But competent people have struggled with many of the same problems. That suggests we should look beyond the person holding the job. I think part of Britain's difficulty is that we keep trying to fix individual failures without dealing with the conditions that keep producing them.
Why one reform isn't enough
Housing is an obvious example. We need homes, but building them requires permission, infrastructure and local consent. Changing one part of that arrangement won't necessarily make the others work. A development can be approved and still wait for a connection, a road or a service nobody has agreed to fund.
The same difficulties appear in energy, transport and industrial development. Policy reversals make them worse. If the rules are likely to change again in two years, waiting can become more sensible than investing.
None of this means that technical reform is pointless. Planning rules, training places and grid connections matter enormously. It means that a minister can make a real improvement and still achieve much less than expected because another obstacle remains.
People have to believe the changes are for them
There is a question of trust underneath these disputes. Why should a community accept disruption if it doesn't believe it will benefit? Why should people support an institution they think regards their attachments as embarrassing or their objections as a nuisance?
I think a government needs a clearer sense of who it serves and what it is asking the country to work towards. National identity matters here because people are more likely to accept a cost when they believe they share a future with those who will benefit. That doesn't make every local objection reasonable. It does help explain why dismissing objectors rarely persuades them.
It would be convenient to turn this into a grand argument about culture and leave the practical work for later. Governments have used that excuse often enough. A discussion about national purpose doesn't connect a house to the electricity supply, and we can't demand agreement on everything before building anything.
Both jobs have to be done. Improve the rules and the administration, while showing people why the changes are worth accepting. Ministers need to understand the obstacles between a promise and its delivery, including the distrust their own institutions may have helped create. Otherwise we'll keep replacing the minister and wondering why so little changes.