Too many officials want Britain to fail

FOR reasons that need not detain us I had to spend three days in hospital last week, which prevented me from supplying my column as usual, and for this I apologise. So for three days I had to observe the world from the horizontal position, sustained only by the daily papers and the wall-affixed TV screen tuned to the news channels. Almost all the latter were miserably negative on the subject of how our old country is doing. Everywhere you looked it was one commentator or pundit after another telling us we were useless and going nowhere.

The TV news channels deny bias but it exists and it is easy to achieve. Just invite one pessimist after another to give interviews and the emerging picture will be what the news channel wants it to be – gloomy.

And another impression is unavoidable: the overwhelming majority of those content to run this country down come from the political Left.

There is a simple criterion that, if applied, would change all that, though there is a guarantee that it never will be applied.

How many of those self-important office-occupiers are on the public payroll? It looked from a hospital bed as if a startling proportion of those who have spent their lives living off the taxpayer feel they have nothing better to do than run the old place down.

THIS startling difference of view was far and away the most marked in the radio and TV debates covering that nowexhausting subject Brexit. Those who opined that we could be a worldwide trading giant if we had the confidence, freedom and dynamism of the private sector were few and far between and quickly brought a sneer to the face of the interviewer and the bureaucrat across the table.

Forgive me for saying it again, but free trade on a global basis is the key. It avoids subordination, leaves your sovereignty intact and creates prosperity. It is a world-order that could have had a resounding endorsement from our Prime Minister in her longawaited speech in Florence last Friday. Alas no. All we got was a recipe for “wouldn’t it be nice if…” rather than “this is what we intend to do”.

But there is a blatantly clear reason why the clarion call out of Downing Street resembles less the thundering of Winnie or Maggie than the tootle of an apologetic tin whistle. It does not take rocket science, nor the subtle cynicism of Talleyrand or the ruthless intent to win of Machiavelli. If you want to achieve a goal, the last thing you do is let two bodies of people dedicated to seeing the project fail get involved.

Yet that is what our Government has done. Both the Foreign Office and the Treasury are trying to have their say on Brexit. Both are departments almost entirely staffed at the top end by mandarins who, through their long careers in bureaucracy, have worshipped the EU dream and are now eager to see Brexit fail.

Without a clear-out and the arrival of a new and dynamic team we punters are going to have to witness concession after concession until we wonder why we had a referendum at all.

To listen to the Remoaners you would think the EU was booming on all fronts. Apart from Germany it isn’t and some of the 27 who sit in judgment are economically desperately ill. Whatever your view, the next 12 months are going to be remarkable.

If only our senior political team can keep their nerve, we have got literally everything to play for.