Whitehall bias

The Remainer alliance includes much of Whitehall: former civil servants certainly showed their true colours in a Lords vote on the customs union on Wednesday. Every former Cabinet secretary came out against the Government. The civil service is filled by some fine men and women with high ethical standards. Nevertheless, the notion that they are utterly objective is a myth that was well and truly busted by the EU referendum. Britain’s public sector establishment is almost of one mind when it comes to certain key policy issues.

That was also clear when Lord Kerslake appeared on Newsnight the same evening to discuss the hostile environment policy blamed for the Windrush scandal. He was introduced as a former head of the civil service and a “crossbench peer who has done work for the Labour Party”. His CV is more substantial than that: last year Lord Kerslake was appointed to help Labour prepare for government and said many of Mr Corbyn’s policies were “not unusual”, and even common on the continent. He told Newsnight that ministers in the Coalition government had compared Tory immigration policy to that of Nazi Germany.

His language was hyperbolic, offensive and especially inappropriate when Labour itself is confronted by an anti-semitism scandal. The peer spoke as if he was as free of political persuasion as the day he was born, and yet was passing comment on both the setting of immigration targets by ministers and their implementation. Popular antipathy towards illegal immigration is demonstrable and reasonable – and Lord Kerslake’s subjective judgment reflects the liberal bias that runs through Whitehall like Brighton rock.