Are the nation’s civil servants drawing any conclusions?

If you’re finding the past couple of weeks bewildering, can you imagine what it’s like having – in the words of the celebrated civil service Twitter hero of 2020 – to actually work with these truth-twisters?

Pity, in particular, the tormented ring-wraiths of His Majesty’s Treasury. They will continue to be shackled to their gilded laptops until they come up with a narrative that a rattled prime minister and her brutalised chancellor can use to resolve their trilemma.

Spare a thought, too, for the rest of us who work in other government departments. Only last week civil servants were, in effect, asked to scrap 5% efficiency savings already agreed in response to the Treasury’s panicky demand that departments scour the back of the sofa in search of billions of pounds worth of new “efficiencies” and growth plans.

In the meantime, are the nation’s civil servants drawing any conclusions about whether Truss will be an even bigger disaster than her predecessor? In a chaotic week during which it also emerged that DWP civil servants, like so many of their clients, are having to switch off their heating and rely on foodbanks to survive the winter, we are drawing conclusions, hard.

Because while Boris Johnson’s personal untrustworthiness undoubtedly brought the reputation of the office of prime minister to new lows, Truss appears to be trying to go one better by trying to destroy all trust in the machinery of government itself. First as farce, then as tragedy.

Consider what she has already put the civil service, the cabinet and her MPs through. First, she allowed Kwasi Kwarteng – on his very first day as chancellor – to defenestrate the widely respected Treasury permanent secretary Tom Scholar at the very moment when an economic tsunami is crashing over the country. We expect senior civil service “disrupter” and suspected Truss loyalist Antonia Romero to be announced as Scholar’s successor very soon, despite having zero previous Treasury experience. Right-o.

Second, she didn’t bother telling cabinet – let alone parliament – about the plan to scrap the top rate of income tax and is now overseeing an entirely predictable descent into open warfare over the 45p tax U-turn and benefit cuts.

Third, she and Kwarteng ignored warnings that unfunded tax cuts would alarm world markets, and deliberately sidelined independent evidence from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The intention was clear: to press ahead, unencumbered by any forecast that might cast any doubt on their plans, a move that may cost the country up to £65bn.

This isn’t Britannia Unchained. It’s Britannia Unhinged.

It wasn’t always like this. In hallowed antiquity, back before Truss, Kwarteng, Michael Gove and the other high priests of Brexit got their mitts on the levers of power, the Westminster model of government worked quite well for more than a hundred years.

After winning an election, newly minted ministers would hand a well-thumbed copy of their manifesto to a small army of officials, who’d then get stuck into the research, analysis and consultation needed to turn the government’s glittering vision into reality.

The author works for the UK civil service

Courtesy: Guardian News & Media Ltd. To read full text of this edited version, click here.

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