Uncivil service

Asenior civil servant tells us that they witnessed officials openly undermining Priti Patel in meetings, having apparently “disagreed with what she was trying to do”. This brings a different perspective to the bullying accusations levelled against the Home Secretary, which her allies say amount to a coordinated campaign of briefings.

The political context to this story is that the Government has an enormous amount it has to get done and Ms Patel has more on her plate than most, from fighting knife crime to introducing a new immigration system. Unfortunately, parts of the civil service might not be up to the job. This wouldn’t be anything new: complaints have been made before about the competence of the department. In 2006, under Dr John Reid, it was famously described as “not fit for purpose”.

To that, we can add the likelihood that some civil servants don’t want to implement certain policies because they disagree with them. This would be outrageous. Whether one agrees with Ms Patel’s agenda or not is beside the point: she is elected and the mandarins are not. They exist purely to help the people’s elected representatives do what they were elected to do. Civil servants should not be able to stonewall policies that they don’t like or bring down ministers they disagree with. If that’s their intention, they are welcome to resign from the service and stand for Parliament.

There is a Cabinet Office inquiry into the matter and it ought to be allowed to run its course. The fact that so many Left-wingers and Remainers have made their minds up about Ms Patel is inappropriate and merely demonstrates that their real agenda is to derail the Government and democracy.