The Unmanageable Mr Bates shows how stubborn he really is

SO, now we know: the Post Office sacked Alan Bates because it called him “unmanageable”. Stick it on a T-shirt! Whack it on a hat! There’s no greater compliment in bureaucratic Britain than being impossible to manage, and at the Post Office Inquiry hearings in Aldwych House, we learnt how Bad Boy Bates gained his reputation.

His answers were short, precise, often funny. The TV show made him seem tireless but a tad tiresome; dramatists think everyone’s grim up north. Here we saw the Scouse humour. Did you follow the Post Office’s instructions to the letter, asked the inquiry? “[You mean], did I try to bankrupt myself?” replied Bates with a smile. “No, not to that extent.”

The Covid hearings could take tips on how to run an inquiry. This one has biscuits and dogs (a Chihuahua and a Yorkie in a green jumper). Its lawyers don’t feel the need to play to the gallery. While the Covid circus is a celebration of elitism – “if only we’d listened to the statisticians!” – the Post Office scandal is its greatest indictment, a story of common sense crushed by ignorant expertise.

Take poor Mr Bates who, at his post office in Wales, was forced to install the Horizon accounting software, which quickly turned out to be about as reliable as a Soviet dishwasher.

It declared a mysterious shortfall in money; Mr Bates let it roll over, and told the Post Office what he was doing. Suddenly, the Post Office demanded the cash, ended his contract and attacked his character. Its methods, claimed Mr Bates, were “Stalinistic”.

If you take out the element of mass murder, he’s basically right.

I’m not saying that if the Post Office could have sent Mr Bates to a gulag, it would have... but this was Kafkaesque stuff.

The National Federation of Subpostmasters turned out to be a Potemkin union; they did nowt. He wrote to Ed Davey, then the responsible minister, who replied that the Government prefers to keep the Post Office at an “arm’s length”. This was bizarre, given that the Government owns the wretched thing, but at some point also ceased being true, for evidence was presented of backchannel communication between the two entities.

Officials continued to insist that Horizon was working two years after the Post Office had written to their insurer to let them know it might be faulty – by now probably in danger of gaining sentience and waging nuclear war on mankind.

This organisation, concluded Bates, is “atrocious... It needs removing... It’s a dead duck”. Unkind to dead ducks, I’d say, as they don’t make you queue for 30 minutes and then, when you come to write a label for the parcel, announce they’re all out of pens.

Mr Bates left the inquiry to be surrounded by cameras and confused tourists. “Who is he?” asked an American. “He’s called Matt Hancock,” I replied. Let’s see what they make of that in Wyoming. “What did you think of the hearings?” shouted a hack. “Nice sunshine,” Mr Bates beamed. “Nice day. Plenty of friends.”

And what will he do when justice is won and his battle over? He said: “I’ll go and buy a little post office somewhere.”

He called the Post Office ‘Stalinistic’. If you take out the element of mass murder, he’s basically right