Revenge of The Civil Service Cat-Lovers

Apparently the former head of the Civil Service has called Gordon Brown a Stalinist in the Financial Times. Oh dear, how very uncivil of him.

It’s revenge postponed, and personally I hink it all started when the Blairs got rid of Humphrey the Downing St. cat…

My efforts at political prediction are, like everybody’s, hit and miss. But even when my dire prognostications prove horribly right it’s still very satisfying. I predicted back in 2004 (good grief, is that 3 years ago already?) although I’d been saying it l since long before, that it would be the civil service that’d eventually finish New Labour and damned if that hasn’t come true.

One of the things that has fascinated me about New Labour in power has been their relationship with the civil service. It’s essentially been one of contempt; Blair and co swiftly installed their political apparatchiks in control of key departments, elbowing aside career civil servants and all pretence at impartial and effcient administration in favour of ‘sofa government’, decisions made on the fly, unminuted and unrecorded. HM Government swiftly became a loose amalgamation of incompetent call-centres run by loyal party droids with spreadsheets full of targets and no experience of management of any kind. You could if feeling particularly sardonic make an analogy with how the Republicans sent those Heritage Foundation kids to run the Iraq Provisional Coalition Authority; only with fewer rocket attacks and less jeebus and more tea, biscuits and equal opps policies.

They’ve pretty much managed to gut every department, from health to crime and even the legal system and judiciary. The government we had pre-97, imperfect though it undoubtedly was, at least creaked away with a semblance of impartiality and adherence to law, but New Labour have managed to break government and the social contract completely. The senior civil service cavilled privately, but went along with it mostly, despite uproar from lower-ranking civil servants’ and the civil service union, the PCS.

But then they messed with Sir Humphrey’s pension. Ooops.

Here’s what I wrote then:

But to think that of all things, after Iraq, after the lies, vanity, deceit and butchery – it’s the world’s most dull issue, civil service pensions, that will do for this government. Blair, out of sheer hubris, is engaged in chopping away at the support he’s standing on. Pension reform, as proposed, has the potential to cut pensions not only for lower grade staff but also those at the very top, like Cabinet officials and private secretaries to Ministers and … Think Sir Humphrey and Bernard, lots and lots of them, and each one with a numerous complement of departmental staff. Who also have staff. Expect more damaging leaks.

Well that’s certainly proved to be true for Blair at least, as Cash for Honours, the Blunkett affair, the Home Office debacle, and numerous other leak-based scandals show. But so far Gordon Brown, God’s Anointed in Downing St, has escaped the worst of it, having invented for himself a spurious carapace of probity. I bet he’s been thinking “Nearly there, nearly there…” as his ascendancy to the PMship grows ever closer; look how apparently relaxed he was with Tony Blair’s trying to make himself a permanent backseat driver yesterday.

But just as Brown must’ve been starting to unclench his jaw muscles slightly, just guess what happened. The mandarins tend to take their revenge slowly but when they do it’s vicious – and as always impeccably polite:

LONDON (AFX) – UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has exhibited a ‘Stalinist ruthlessness’ in government, belittling his cabinet colleagues whom the Treasury treats with ‘more or less complete contempt’, the Financial Times newspaper reported, quoting Lord Turnbull.

In an interview with the FT, Lord Turnbull, permanent secretary to the Treasury for four years under Brown before becoming cabinet secretary in 2002, accused Brown, who is widely tipped to become prime minister following Tony Blair’s departure, of a ‘very cynical view of mankind and his colleagues’.

‘He cannot allow them any serious discussion about priorities. His view is that it is just not worth it and ‘they will get what I decide’. And that is a very insulting process,’ he said.

‘Do those ends justify the means? It has enhanced Treasury control, but at the expense of any government cohesion and any assessment of strategy. You can choose whether you are impressed or depressed by that, but you cannot help admire the sheer Stalinist ruthlessness of it all,’ he told the FT.

Turnbull is now saying these comments were off-the-record and not for publication. Of course they weren’t, nod nod, wink wink, say no more.

It’s Brown, with his simultaneously parsimonious grip on public finance but loose hand with corporate tax cuts and privatisation, that’s been the real driving force in the destruction of the British government and I have to admire Lord Turnbull’s patience in biding his time until the very last lap to nobble him.

On the other hand, it’s Turnbull and his fellow mandarins that chose not to put their positions in jeopardy at the time by speaking out about New Labour’s lax ethics, incompetence and corruption. Such self-interested hypocrisy certainly isn’t something to admire. It’s easy to have the courage to speak out when it no longer has any personal consequences for you.

Nevertheless – Humphrey the cat, wherever you are, you have been avenged.