James Watt, Edinburgh University graduate and former CEO of BrewDog, has launched an unofficial government watchdog modeled after Elon Musk’s American program, aiming to “repair broken Britain.”
Shadow Doge, launched in mid-February, seeks to identify wastage in government departments, administrative bodies, and town halls.
The program is inspired by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is dismissing thousands of federal workers in the US to streamline government bureaucracy.
Speaking to The Times, Watt described Musk as “nothing short of remarkable” and a “phenomenal business success.”
Shadow Doge has since been rebranded to the Coalition for Organisational Reform and Government Improvement (CORGI), which aims to assess UK and Holyrood Government spending using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and a hotline for citizens to report waste.
CORGI is primarily reliant on crowdsourcing and volunteers to fund their work. Watt claimed on X that “350+ experts have stepped up to help,” including “public sector insiders, financial analysts, and data scientists.”
Watt stated: “We’re being taxed more than we’ve ever been taxed for a level of service that has never been weaker… I want to try and see if we could show an alternative to austerity or further raising taxes.”
Further, Anas Sarwar and Russell Findlay, the Scottish Labour leader and Scottish Conservative leader, respectively, have already promised to establish a Holyrood DOGE should they win next year’s elections. Sarwar said that a Holyrood DOGE would “stop the waste and deliver value for money for you, the taxpayer.”
Watt graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2004 with a degree in Law and Economics, and co-founded BrewDog in 2007 with Martin Dickie.
He stepped down as CEO in 2024, following allegations of toxic work culture and inappropriate behavior towards female staff – all of which Watt denies.
Students largely view CORGI and a Holyrood DOGE as harmful to Scottish livelihood, with one student sharing that the program may “drain the government of its ability to provide for the people,” suggesting a “complete breakdown of government.”
Another student added that potential “budget cuts and loss of jobs is a dangerous shift towards entrepreneurial neoliberalism.”
“James B Watt from Brewdog” by James Cridland is licensed under CC BY 2.0.