Top ex-civil servant to prepare Corbyn as next prime minister
Lord Kerslake and team of former mandarins to guide Labour on how it could put Left-wing agenda in place
JEREMY CORBYN could become prime minister with a deliverable Labour manifesto, says a former head of the Civil Service.
Lord Kerslake, an independent cross-bench peer, said many of Mr Corbyn’s Left-wing ideas were “not unusual” and were common on the Continent.
As Sir Bob Kerslake, Lord Kerslake was head of the civil service from 2012 to 2015. Now he has just been appointed to help Labour prepare for government and has enlisted a group of former mandarins to support him.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Lord Kerslake said: “They are doing the right thing to take these steps to prepare for government. It is what oppositions should do.
“They are serious about preparing for government and therefore how they might implement what they want to do. In the context of UK politics, it is quite radical.
“It is not unusual for some of the things they want to have run by the state being run by the state in other parts of Europe. The comparison is quite illuminating.
“What might seem to some ‘blimey, that looks outlandish’, is already happening in other places. Germany, for example, rightly or wrongly, doesn’t have a major student fees system.
“Just because it is a very different path that this country has been on for the past 30 or 40 years, we should not assume therefore that it is sort of completely new and has not been done anywhere else.”
Asked if he could see Mr Corbyn becoming prime minister, Lord Kerslake replied: “Yes. Of course in any democracy you can see that people can become prime minister.
“Why wouldn’t you see it as a possibility if they have received that level of votes and support?”
Lord Kerslake, 62, who is not being paid for his advisory role, added: “In a number of ways this country is in quite a bad way and we should be honest enough to acknowledge that. None of this is to be a doomsayer – I am actually a naturally optimistic person. The country does need a hard look at the policies that it has worked under for quite a long time.
“The two main political parties are actually coming to the same conclusion – that we need a break with the past, a revisiting of how the economy works.”
The work he has been appointed to do involves briefing Mr Corbyn’s team on “what to expect in government and to talk to them about how particular policies might be implemented and what the issues are that they might have to think about”.
Lord Kerslake has known John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, since he was chairman of the finance committee of the Greater London Council in the 1980s.
He said he found Mr McDonnell “businesslike” and “genuinely keen to receive advice”.
Lord Kerslake, who also once headed the honours system, said that the forfeiture committee should meet to discuss the CBE of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
“The key test,” he said, was “do they bring the honours system into disrepute?
“And to me there is a very clear case to be answered in the case of Harvey Weinstein.”
Lord Kerslake added that the committee would be compelled to consider Mr Weinstein’s case if it received letters from members of the public or if Theresa May, the Prime Minister, raised it as an issue.