The UK government has now admitted to dropping more than £2 million on influencers since July 2024, which is a remarkable achievement in the field of spending money on things that do not fix anything. Departments are deploying TikTokers and Instagram personalities alongside traditional media campaigns, because apparently a 30-second dance video about NHS waiting lists is the missing ingredient in healthcare policy.
Let’s be clear about what £2 million buys you in the influencer economy: roughly 47 posts from mid-tier creators with engagement rates that would embarrass a vending machine. The government could have hired 30 actual policy analysts, funded three small hospitals, or kept a library open. Instead, they chose to pay someone with 200,000 followers to say the word ‘infrastructure’ while standing in front of a ring light.
What makes this genuinely brilliant is the timing. Departments are cutting essential services while simultaneously bankrolling content creators to tell people how great the government is. It’s not incompetence — it’s a perfectly executed strategy where the message matters more than the outcome. The influencer posts will disappear in 24 hours. The people waiting 18 months for surgery will still be waiting.
The government insists this is part of a broader communications strategy. It is. That strategy is: if you cannot deliver results, at least make sure someone with nice lighting talks about your intentions. By September 2026, they will have probably spent closer to £3 million. By then, the influencers will have moved on to cryptocurrency scams.