So, where is Sir Humphrey when we need him?
DUNDEE has lost a ‘J’. The grand old city, which is hosting the Scottish Labour Party conference this weekend, is famous for the ‘three Js’ of jute, jam and journalism.
But when he addressed conference on Friday, UK party leader Jeremy Corbyn praised Dundee for its history in jute and jam, but for some reason he left out journalism.
Perhaps he has fallen out with the Morning Star.
THERE is something wrong with Sir Humphrey. He is either sick, on strike or being horribly ignored. UK Cabinet Ministers are now making such dreadful gaffes, so regularly, it suggests their collective relationship with the country’s top civil servants is fractured. The question is why and by whom.
The latest spate started with the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on a recent trip to Slovenia.
Professing to have been a regular visitor before he became Foreign Secretary, he praised Slovenia for its ‘really remarkable transformation from a Soviet vassal state to a modern European democracy’.
The problem is Slovenia never was a ‘Soviet vassal state’. It was a prosperous part of Yugoslavia, a non-aligned state which under Marshal Tito was famed for standing up to the former Soviet Union.
Great offence was naturally taken, as well as revenge when the Slovenian president suggested a few days later that Brexit should be delayed.
If this gaffe had been from a junior trade minister it would have been bad enough. But from arguably Britain’s top diplomat?
IHAVE been a special adviser in the Foreign Office. On trips like these the speeches are pored over for days. A Slovenian expert will have been summoned to make sure every detail was right and warn of potholes in the road.
On this occasion it would seem that officials saw a stray manhole cover on the path Mr Hunt was taking but waited until he had fallen in the hole to point it out.
Admittedly Mr Hunt is capable of doing this kind of thing all on his own. He got the nationality of his wife wrong on a visit to China, telling Chinese officials she was Japanese, something that wouldn’t have endeared him to them, before remembering she was in fact Chinese. You know, foreign.
Even Cabinet Ministers are allowed to read books, google or speak to their spouses to get things right. But with dozens of erudite civil servants around him, getting things wrong looks like an act of recklessness.
It got worse last week when Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley said that killings by the UK’s armed forces during the Troubles ‘were not crimes’ but were actions by troops ‘fulfilling their duties in a dignified and appropriate way’.
Just before Northern Irish legal authorities announce whether or not they are to prosecute any of the soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday, this was a mind-bogglingly inappropriate statement to make.
But watching the TV footage it looks not like an off-the-cuff remark, but something said in reference to her Ministerial notes.
Ms Bradley is the woman who, weeks after her appointment, expressed her surprise that the Nationalist community in Ulster don’t vote Unionist and that Unionists never vote Nationalist. Bless.
She clearly knows nothing about Northern Ireland, nor indeed, when to shut up. But you would think that pit of ignorance would make her rely on her officials more, not less.
She does not appear to have the arrogance of Mr Hunt. Surely an official would not, could not, have advised her to say that, yet in the grovelling apologies she has given since, she has insisted the comments are not her view. So, were officials trying to get her sacked?
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling’s costly mistakes at more than one department suggest his failings are simply down to him, and he cannot use the excuse of receiving poor advice from officials.
You could argue in mitigation that the all-consuming pressures of Brexit are to blame in this political breakdown, but the mistakes of Mr Hunt and Ms Bradley are so basic that cannot be credible.
Ministers need to get the relationship with the civil service right. The sit-com caricature is that politicians and officials are two sides at war, but that is just comedy.
Most civil servants I worked with were highly talented and dedicated. The real peril was to resist becoming a ‘prisoner’ of the civil service and act just like them when you were hired to give a political edge.
At one department a Permanent Secretary did try to go to war with my Minister and told his most senior colleagues not to deal with his special adviser. I know this because two of those senior colleagues told me about the meeting – which told me more about what they thought of him than anything else.
But Ministers who ignore advice should remember this. It is legend around Whitehall that after one reshuffle, the new Secretary of State was introduced to the most senior official in his department.
‘You know,’ said the civil servant, ‘we both have the words “Secretary of State” in our job titles. But if I were you, I would remember that I’m the only one with the word “Permanent” in front of them.’