(FT paywall) The smashing of the British state
https://www.ft.com/content/75ed2705-7bd0-4da2-98b9-73b40041654c
In an inversion of the tradition that it is ministers who are accountable for mistakes, at least half a dozen senior civil servants have been forced out of their jobs
following a year of coronavirus blunders and other policy errors by the government.
Not a single minister has been sacked.
The battle lines have been drawn.
....
Six of the most senior officials running ministries have quit or been pushed out this year
- the heads of the home, foreign, justice and education ministries, as well as the head of the government’s legal service and the service’s chief executive.
Some, like Jonathan Slater at education, found themselves taking the rap for their minister’s failings;
others, like Simon McDonald at the Foreign Office, found their jobs had disappeared.
Allies of the prime minister made it known they were “Remainers”.
Some see this upheaval as a politicisation of the state, an effort to install Brexiters and those thought to be more pro-Conservative.
Simon Fraser, who was a civil servant for 36 years and permanent secretary at the Foreign Office until 2015,
says the changes are more about loyalty than bringing in new experts.
“It’s not that top civil service appointments are becoming political in a party sense as in America,
but some of them have been politicised by ministers choosing people who are seen as loyalists while pushing others out.”
It is a shift that Fraser warns will damage the institution.
“Of course civil servants must loyally implement government policy,
but if this becomes a trend it will weaken the objectivity of the civil service,
which is still one of the great institutions we have, and mean ministers get less forthright advice.”
....
Dave Penman, head of the FDA, the union that represents senior civil servants ...
says he has “never heard them talk about a government like this”.
He suggests officials are filled with fear about who is going to be sacked next and whether they are being monitored for their loyalty.
"There is an awful lot of chaos and short-termism. It’s about who they trust and who is on side — it’s a very Trumpian approach.”
....
Johnson, Cummings and Gove are three men in a hurry:
the next election may not be for another three or four years, but their revolution will have much deeper consequences.
With their picks leading Whitehall departments, new officials recruited in their image and Conservative allies running public bodies,
the British state will be smashed and rebuilt in the coming years.
< or just smashed and the rubble left lying in the streets >