The Dangers of the Erosion of the Independence of Competition Policy and Enforcement
Dan Taylor — October 2026
1. Introduction
Since 2024, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK's competition regulator, has undergone two simultaneous and seemingly contradictory shifts. On the one hand, it has experienced a substantial expansion of its institutional powers, particularly under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Simultaneously, however, it has shown considerable restraint in the exercise of these powers, fitting within what has been characterised by some as a more hands-off approach towards merger-control, with the CMA failing to block a single merger in 2025.
This moderation in enforcement has coincided with the Government taking an increasingly hands-on approach to competition policy. This undermines the central principle that an independent regulator should be insulated from political debate. The result is a risk of greater uncertainty for businesses, along with a less stable environment for investment. It also raises concerns as to the future direction of competition policy, particularly given that the growth in the CMA's underlying powers has occurred alongside, rather than in place of, a growing political willingness to influence the CMA.
This essay will first address the erosion of the CMA's independence, setting out how this threatens to increase business uncertainty and harm long-term growth prospects. It will then turn to consider what the arrival of Andy Burnham into No.10 means for the future of competition policy, pointing to contradictions within the Government's own statements. It will then be argued more broadly that by eroding the CMA's institutional independence, the Government has set a troubling precedent, one which—whatever its short-term benefits for business—risks the long-term stability and credibility of the UK's competition regime.
2. The Shift to Hands-Off Enforcement
2025/26 marked a decisive shift in the CMA's behaviour. In a step away from what was widely characterised as a heavy-handed approach to merger control in the aftermath of the UK's departure from the European Union, the CMA has become noticeably more permissive.
The number of Phase 1 cases (initial merger reviews) reached an all-time low of just 32 in 2025/26, representing a 22% year-on-year decrease from 41 in 2024/25, and down from 54 in 2022/23. Alongside reviewing fewer cases, the proportion of Phase 1 cases subjected to further scrutiny through a Case Review Meeting (CRM) has collapsed, from 49% in 2024/25 to just 22% in 2025/26.
This marks a sharp break from the CMA's seemingly more stringent approach post-Brexit. This was most visible in the 2021 decision to block Facebook's attempted acquisition of Giphy. Critics at the time argued that the action risked turning the CMA into a de facto global merger regulator, owing to the relatively small size of the transaction and the fact that Giphy was loss-making. In a similar case, despite the European Commission having approved the deal subject to remedies, the CMA’s initial decision in 2023 to block Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard over concerns about competition in the emerging cloud-gaming market led to Microsoft President Brad Smith warning that the ruling risked undermining the attractiveness of the UK as a destination for investment. Despite the reversal of the decision, the episode raised the risk that a more stringent approach to merger control may deter investment.
While the CMA’s shift in behaviour since 2024 has been seen by some as evidence of a possible step towards a more flexible, business-friendly regulatory environment, it is in fact a symptom of a more concerning trend: the politicisation of competition policy. While incumbent CMA Chair Doug Gurr, in his keynote speech to the International Chambers of Commerce UK Competition Conference, rejected the suggestion that it was now 'open season for mergers', arguing instead that the record-low case numbers 'likely reflect a lower level of deal activity,' such rhetoric is not straightforwardly borne out by the facts. While the total number of mergers reviewed by the CMA fell by approximately 13% between 2024/25 and 2025/26, the number of concluded Phase 1 investigations declined by 22%. Additionally, ONS data suggested that inward acquisitions increased by 15% in the final quarter of 2025, relative to the final quarter of the previous year. Consequently, data suggests that weaker deal activity alone is not entirely sufficient to explain the decline in formal merger scrutiny.
Given the voluntary nature of the UK's merger control regime, notification to the CMA is not compulsory. This leaves the authority with considerable discretion over which cases to pursue. A significant shift in outcomes, therefore, may be indicative of a change in the selection process itself. In short, competition policy has become politicised; the move to a more laissez-faire approach to merger control was not an organic evolution, but the product of a political moment.
3. The Removal of Marcus Bokkerink
The apparent shift in the CMA's approach cannot be assessed independently from developments in early 2025. In a letter of 24 December 2024, titled 'A new approach to ensure regulators and regulations support growth', the Government explicitly requested that the CMA set out five measurable commitments or changes it intended to implement over the following year, in order to align with the Government's core mission of economic growth.
Just eight days after the CMA's response, Chair Marcus Bokkerink resigned, with former Amazon executive Doug Gurr announced as his interim replacement. While Bokkerink formally resigned, it was widely reported that he had in fact been forced out. This sentiment was compounded by government statements citing the need for a 'change in strategic direction,' with then-Chancellor Rachel Reeves stating, revealingly, that she needed someone aligned with her 'strategic direction . . . somebody who does share the mission and the strategic direction that this government is taking.'
This mechanism is significant in itself. The Secretary of State for Business and Trades’ power to appoint the CMA's Chair, Chief Executive and Board, together with the Government issuing a formal Strategic Steer, setting out the expectation for the CMA to prioritise growth, means that legal independence can coexist with, and indeed obscure, significant channels of political influence over the CMA's leadership and objectives. As David Reader and Magali Eben have argued in an article for the ‘Competition Law Review’, the CMA's re-orientation towards growth was the product of a specific political moment, engineered through symbolic acts. Chief among these was the removal of its Chair. Arguably, for the Government's 'growth mission' to appear credible, a visible symbol of deregulatory change was needed as a signal to investors. In this respect, the CMA was an ideal target.
To a degree, Bokkerink’s removal fits within a broader transatlantic trend in which independent regulators have come under increasing executive pressure. This has been most apparent in the US. For example, a Supreme Court ruling on 29 June 2026, overturned Humphrey's Executor v. United States, which had held that commissioners of independent agencies could not be removed at will by the President. Trump v. Slaughter held that, with the exception of the Federal Reserve Board, the President has the power to remove independent agency heads at will, and deemed lawful Trump's dismissal of Democrat-nominated FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. While the CMA's institutional position remains formally distinct from that of a US independent agency, the underlying dynamic of apparent executive impatience with regulatory independence resulting in the removal of leadership bears striking similarities.
In spite of criticisms, the CMA has sought to reassure the market, with CEO Sarah Cardell stating in November 2025, 'with absolute conviction', that 'there has been no reduction in the operational independence of the CMA.’ Yet, the shift in the CMA's behaviour since Bokkerink's removal sits uneasily with this narrative. In this respect, it is worth drawing on Stefan Voigt's distinction between 'de jure' (formal) and 'de facto' (informal) independence. Voigt's work suggests that in the case of competition policy, de facto independence matters more to economic performance and business perception than de jure independence, and specifically identifies appointment and removal arrangements as principal indicators of independence. This framework is useful, as it considers not only the formal arrangements governing appointments, but also the actual tenure of competition officials, with the implication that premature removal may create incentives for officials to accommodate government preferences. If senior officials perceive that their tenure is, in part, dependent on alignment with political priorities, then the resulting incentives may shape institutional behaviour, without explicit political direction. On this reading, while the CMA retains its de jure independence, the seemingly politically-motivated removal of a Chair, and replacement with a candidate regarded as more receptive to the Government's growth mission, generates valid questions as to the de facto independence of the CMA.
4. The Importance of an Independent Regulator
While the CMA's recent shift to a more hands-off approach may, in the short term, appear encouraging for business, it is symptomatic of a politicisation of competition policy that risks greater uncertainty in the long run. This threatens to jeopardise the very objective of growth that the Government has been pursuing.
From a free-market perspective, the role of competition authorities is controversial. The necessity of strong antitrust enforcement has often been questioned. Robert Bork, in his influential The Antitrust Paradox (1978) argued that excessive regulation could itself undermine the competitive process. Likewise, George Stigler in 1971 highlighted the risk of regulatory capture, arguing that ‘regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit.’ Taken together, these critiques challenge the assumption that greater regulatory intervention necessarily produces more competitive markets. Yet, recognising these risks should not mean an outright rejection of competition enforcement. Instead, it strengthens the case for a restrained, rules-based approach, in which enforcement is confined to clearly identifiable threats to competition, and crucially, is exercised independently of political pressure.
Independence is crucial for competition enforcement. Walter Eucken argued compellingly that monopoly supervision is best carried out by an independent office subject only to the law, rather than as a department of an economic ministry, since the latter is 'far more subject to the pressure of interested parties.' In a broader sense, as Hayek argued in The Constitution of Liberty, markets require government power to be exercised through 'stable, general and predictable rules', not discretion reflective of the government's immediate political objectives. Hayek spoke of the integral importance of a legal framework that enables individuals and firms to plan with a degree of confidence, minimising uncertainty. With the politically-motivated removal of Marcus Bokkerink, and the Strategic Steer that followed it, these principles have been directly undermined, with potentially significant long-term implications. Principal among these is the risk of the erosion of the CMA’s credibility as an independent regulator, and a broader risk of greater regulatory uncertainty, and hence reduced investor confidence going forward.
Beyond bringing into question the principle of regulatory independence, the Government's approach was somewhat self-contradictory. On the one hand, it spoke repeatedly of the importance of economic growth and the need for greater business certainty, yet on the other, by eroding the CMA's independence, it risked creating precisely the uncertainty it claimed to be dispelling.
A substantial body of literature establishes the central importance of independent competition policy to growth. Majone's work has shown how independent regulators insulate market regulation from electoral cycles and political opportunism, thereby reassuring investors. Likewise, Gilardi's 2002 study of 33 regulatory agencies across Europe found that economic regulators, including those responsible for competition, required a higher degree of formal independence than other types of agency, owing to greater investor-credibility demands. Similarly, Kydland and Prescott set out how, if businesses expect political discretion to override established rules on an ad hoc basis, they may under-invest as a consequence.
Beyond this implicit contradiction, there is also a degree of irony to the Government's approach. As Reader and Eben have pointed out, the primary issues affecting investor confidence relate less to competition policy than to macroeconomic policy, explicitly pointing out the impact of tax and planning laws on growth in the UK. In the ASI’s ‘Growth Agenda’ Report, reforms to planning and taxation could deliver an 8.8% long-term uplift to Gross Value Added (GVA). If the Government was serious about encouraging investment, it could achieve considerably more through planning and tax reform than through actions which undermine the CMA's independence, actions which, if anything, threaten to increase investor uncertainty in the future.
5. Relaxed Enforcement, but Widening Scope?
What makes the shift towards a seemingly more politicised approach to competition policy especially concerning is that, while enforcement appears to have become more hands-off, that change was the product of a specific political moment. The political mood may presently favour greater business investment, particularly from large technology companies, but there is no guarantee that this will remain the case in the future. Hence, the fact that this trend has been accompanied by a growth in the CMA’s underlying power creates considerable concerns for the future of British competition policy.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA), which came into force in January 2025, granted the CMA sweeping new powers, including the authority to designate companies with Strategic Market Status (SMS), triggering bespoke 'conduct requirements'. Alongside, the CMA also gained substantial new consumer-protection powers which came into force in April 2025, which included the power to fine traders up to 10% of global turnover for infringements of consumer law, together with new rules on subscription traps, drip pricing and fake reviews.
The use of global turnover as the benchmark for maximum financial penalties raises concerns over proportionality; sanctions calculated with reference to their worldwide revenues, rather than their UK operations alone, creates the potential for penalties that vastly exceed the economic scale of the conduct in question. This would be of particular concern for large multinational enterprises, for whom their UK operations may represent a relatively small proportion of their overall operations. Combined with the potential erosion of the CMA’s credibility as an independent competition regulator, these sweeping new powers risk increasing the costs of regulatory compliance, and deterring investment from the UK.
Along with the breadth of these powers, the limited accountability attached to them is especially concerning. As an Institute for Economic Affairs report has set out, the SMS designation criteria Act are extremely broad. The Act refers to companies taking part in a ‘digital activity linked to the United Kingdom’ which has led to ‘substantial and entrenched market power’ and is in ‘a position of strategic significance’, and has a UK turnover upwards of £1bn. As of March 2022, this turnover threshold could theoretically have captured over 530 UK companies, given that almost any firm of that size offers some form of internet-based service. The CMA additionally retains considerable discretion to design bespoke conduct rules for each SMS-designated firm.
The breadth of these powers is compounded by a marked lack of accountability. Despite the scope and discretion involved, CMA decisions can be challenged only on Judicial Review grounds. Barring a narrow set of exceptions, there is no route to a merits-based review. This leaves the CMA’s Digital Markets Unit with powers to make effectively unchallengeable decisions with substantial impact across the economy. Compounding this, proposed changes to merger guidelines published in early 2026 would abolish the Independent Panel of Experts for Phase 2 investigations, replacing it with a body comprising senior CMA members. While framed as a measure to increase democratic accountability, this risks a further reduction in the independence of competition policy, a particularly troubling prospect given the erosion of the CMA's de facto independence from government, as discussed above.
To date, these powers have been used relatively sparingly, with an unexpectedly small number of SMS designations in place: Google (search services and mobile platforms) and Apple (mobile platforms). There is, however, nothing to suggest that this restraint will persist. With competition policy now demonstrably politicised, a shift in political mood could just as easily produce a significant expansion in the CMA's active use of its powers. This creates precisely the kind of uncertainty and cost for business that undermines the predictability essential to attracting investment and sustaining economic growth. In short, the CMA's present hands-off approach to merger enforcement does nothing to assuage concerns about the growth of its power and discretion. If anything, it should heighten them.
6. Competition Policy Under Burnham
What, then, of competition policy under Andy Burnham? Having become Prime Minister on 20 July 2026, following his election as Labour leader after the resignation of Keir Starmer, there has been considerable speculation as to which direction competition policy will now take. At the time of writing, the signs point towards continuity rather than change: Burnham has retained Jonathan Reynolds as Business Secretary, who was reportedly instrumental to Bokkerink's removal, and Reynolds himself has reiterated that there are no plans to alter the Government's Strategic Steer to the CMA, stating how it will continue to prioritise economic growth over regulatory interference.
Despite these initial signs, there appears to be a tension within the present Government between rhetoric and action, one which points towards a possible future change of direction for competition policy. While Burnham has not spoken explicitly on competition policy itself, his advocacy for bringing utilities back under public control, and for 'ending forty years of neoliberalism', points towards a more interventionist approach than that signalled by Chancellor John Healey. Healey has committed in his September 'Growth Speech' to reducing the burden of business regulation by 25% by the end of the Parliament, while criticising the outsourcing of 'economic enablers' to 'a thicket of arms length bodies and regulators, too often without the predictability or the pace that underpins a thriving market economy.' Effectively, the Government is seemingly pursuing renationalisation of essential services, while also promising a lighter regulatory touch for business. Absent is a single, coherent theory of the state's role in markets.
There are, moreover, already forces within Parliament pushing for a more stringent approach. In February 2026, the Business and Trade Select Committee, chaired by Liam Byrne, a key Burnham ally, published a Report to the Government following the pre-appointment hearing that ultimately confirmed Doug Gurr as permanent Chair. While acknowledging the CMA's role in addressing economic challenges, the report raised a number of concerns: it questioned the CMA's ability to act independently of Government, and asked whether its prioritisation of investment, even when this led to market consolidation, risked overlooking consumer welfare and weakening competitive markets in the long run. It also called explicitly for the Government to seek more rigorous implementation of the DMCCA’s powers in policing digital markets.
The Committee's recommendations, together with Burnham's rhetoric, raise the question of whether what appears at present as a hands-off approach to merger control is likely to stand the test of time. Indeed, some have speculated that the Government may go as far as issuing a non-binding direction for the CMA to make more aggressive use of its digital markets powers. Gurr's own remarks, on assuming his formal five-year term as Chair, are telling in this respect: he pledged simultaneously to provide business with 'greater certainty' over regulation, and asserted the CMA's 'willingness to intervene' against anti-competitive conduct - an attempt to hold together precisely the two commitments this essay has argued sit in tension. Ultimately, only time will tell, but it is clear that there is a tension at the heart of the present Government's approach to competition law, and given the erosion of the CMA's institutional independence under the previous Government, there is little to guarantee that the CMA's present approach will persist.
7. The Future of Competition Policy
Looking ahead, there is reason to suggest that the present, seemingly business-friendly phase of CMA enforcement may prove to be short-lived. The same political conditions that permitted Bokkerink's removal, namely, a willingness to treat competition policy as an instrument of prevailing political sentiment, as opposed to a body of law insulated from it, could just as easily produce the opposite outcome, were that sentiment to shift. There are already signs this shift may be underway: Burnham's own rhetoric on the market power of large technology companies, and the Business and Trade Committee's calls for more rigorous use of the CMA's digital markets powers, suggest an appetite in some political quarters for a more assertive posture towards competition policy, particularly towards Big Tech.
International experience lends further weight to these concerns. In the United States, the assertive approach to antitrust enforcement pursued under Lina Khan during the Biden administration gave way to a different set of enforcement priorities following the return of Donald Trump in 2025. Yet, the incoming FTC Chair, Andrew Ferguson, notably retained the previous administration's merger guidelines, explicitly recognising that ‘stability is good for the enforcement agencies’, describing reworking guidelines as a ‘time consuming and expensive’ process. Similar tensions are visible in the European Union, where demands from some political quarters for ‘European champions’ and greater economic competitiveness have prompted a reconsideration of merger-control policy, with greater emphasis placed on investment, innovation and the creation of European firms capable of competing internationally. Taken together, these developments illustrate how competition enforcement can become entangled with broader political and economic objectives. For the UK, the concern is that the precedent established by Bokkerink's departure could make the CMA increasingly vulnerable to comparable shifts in direction, undermining the regulatory predictability on which long-term business planning depends.
Furthermore, were concerns around big-tech to develop into a broader anti-technology populism, one which treated size itself, rather than demonstrated anti-competitive conduct, as the appropriate target of enforcement, the consequences would likely prove more damaging than the present light-touch approach. As critics of this style of enforcement have argued, treating size as inherently problematic risks depriving the public of the benefits, through lower prices and higher-quality products, that scale can genuinely deliver, while doing little to address the underlying drivers of market power. More troublingly still, a regulator whose enforcement posture can swing from unusually hands-off to unusually aggressive, based on the wishes of the incumbent Government and prevailing political mood, is arguably worse for business confidence than one which is consistently interventionist. It is such volatility rather than just the direction of enforcement that creates significant uncertainty for businesses, and it is precisely this volatility that the politicisation of the CMA has now made more likely.
7. Conclusion
The CMA's present approach may appear on face-value to offer a more business-friendly regulatory environment; there are genuine benefits to faster merger reviews, more proportionate information demands and greater predictability over which mergers are likely to attract scrutiny. The concern developed in this essay, however, is related to the process which brought these changes into being; they were the product of political pressures and represent an erosion of the CMA’s de facto independence, and, indeed, its credibility.
This is concerning in the long run: the politicisation of competition policy, far from promoting the predictability and stability it is ostensibly meant to serve, risks increasing business uncertainty. It also serves to distract from arguably more pressing macroeconomic issues that hold back the UK’s growth prospects, tax and planning chief among them.
What makes these concerns still more pressing is the context in which they arose: a growing scope, and a diminishing accountability within the CMA's underlying powers. A regulator with expanded discretion and reduced independence is not a stable long-term arrangement, regardless of its current enforcement posture; it is, at best, a temporary equilibrium, contingent on a political mood that has already proven itself changeable once, with little to indicate that this will not change in the future.
The long-term question for the CMA is consequently not whether it should be permanently permissive or permanently interventionist. It is whether businesses, consumers and investors can expect the rules and institutional incentives governing competition policy to remain sufficiently stable when political priorities change. Current restraint may be welcome among many businesses; future intervention may be welcomed by many consumers or competitors. Yet, neither is a substitute for a competition regime whose credibility rests on durable institutions rather than the political contingencies of the moment.