Sir Humphrey can scream but he HAS given up all pretence of neutrality
As someone who grew up in Italy, a country where every official has their price, I have always been proud of Britain’s reputation as one of the most honest democracies on the planet.
Today, that reputation is in peril. ever since we voted to leave the eU, the true nature of our so- called ruling classes — from the civil service to the judiciary — has become apparent.
And it is clear that far from being humble shepherds of the people’s wishes, they are, in fact, a bunch of egomaniacal control freaks who would sooner lay waste to democracy than assist a process with which they do not agree.
The BBC, in receipt of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, is so brazen in its bias it hardly registers any more.
They’ll happily offer a platform to anyone prepared to bang the antiBrexit drum. even Anna soubry.
As for the judiciary, I remember well the atmosphere that greeted my husband in the week following the referendum when, in those febrile days after the resignation of David Cameron, he addressed the Guildhall as Lord Chancellor.
The great and the good of Britain’s justice system were there in all their finery, and made no secret of their feelings. some slow hand-clapped; others were even more openly hostile. Whatever else these people were, they were certainly not impartial. N
ON Whitehall’s senior mandarins, too, have revealed their true colours. on sunday, Andrew Turnbull, who presided over Her majesty’s Civil service between 2002 and 2005, accused politicians of behaving like nazis for daring to suggest that some Treasury officials might be dragging their feet on Brexit.
His successor, Gus o’Donnell, compared Brexit-supporting ministers to ‘snake oil salesmen’. And a third former Civil service head, Lord Butler, accused ‘rabid Brexiteers’ of seeking to ‘intimidate’ the Civil service.
even if those accusations were true, the fact that these three high-ranking former officials should feel sufficiently emboldened to speak out with such vehemence beggars belief.
not only is it thoroughly inappropriate, it also reveals something even more worrying: they’ve given up all pretence of impartiality. They’ve nailed their colours to the mast, and they don’t care who knows.
Let’s be clear: we are not talking about ordinary civil servants here, the thousands of good, hard-working people who issue our passports or help the unemployed into jobs.
We’re talking about those at the very top of the tree who, after so many years in the orbit of power, have started to believe that they actually hold it.
Who, instead of making sure that the Government’s work is carried out quickly and efficiently, overlay their own judgments on political decisions and either seek to ignore or thwart policy.
As Tony Blair once said of his time in office: ‘If you had a crisis, there is nothing better than that British [Civil service]. But when it came to how do you do health service reform or education reform, or the early battles I had in reforming asylum and immigration policy, I found it frankly just unresponsive.’
subsequent administrations have suffered from the same problem. When Cameron came to power, one of his missions was root-and-branch reform of the Civil service, which he appointed Francis maude to oversee. But as those silver-tongued mandarins slowly spun him in their web, Cameron’s reforming ardour cooled.
since then, matters have deteriorated. The Prime minister’s weakness is the current Civil service head Jeremy Heywood’s strength. We now have a situation within government departments where ministers can barely place an order for paperclips, let alone try to implement policy.
meanwhile, officials continue to leak, thwart and obstruct at every turn. And anyone who dares stand up to them had better be ready.
Because, rather like that other unelected elite in Brussels, there is nothing the British Civil service is more skilled in these days than the art of self-preservation.