A rare photo of me keeping my eyes on the Westminster swamp dwellers

 

Firstly, a confession: today, I was going to write about something completely different, something relating WhatsApp, social media and AI. However, the Gray scandal  scuppered this project.

Isn’t it just lovely when ‘events’ come together to provide a huge distraction from real issues! That’s what the editors of the Westminster MSM must have thought when presenting us with “Teh News” for the weekend. Just look at this morning’s front pages: “Newspaper headlines: Johnson faces ‘punishment’ and his ‘stitch-up’’ (link)

Instead of addressing the problem of a partisan Whitehall where a top mandarin can drop her job and move straight away to a top job with the opposition party, instead of dealing with the content of the ‘Lockdown Files’, they give a barely noticeable nod to yon files and the Gray scandal while homing in on Johnson and Partygate. See – that’s how to do a proper deflection job!

And since it’s the weekend, the meaty matter for today’s Hancock stuff is that infamous kiss: sex for Saturday, oh yeah! That’s the only stuff which we thick plebs outside the M25 are interested in, isn’t it.

Meanwhile, the commentariat and opinion-providers in the broadsheets are working hard at making the whole Gray thing look like ‘normal’ behaviour even when pointing out gently that perhaps it might be just a tad questionable. I’m certain that we’re all relieved to learn from Remain Central that: “Sue Gray faces a longer wait to start work at the Labour Party if she is found to have damaged perceptions of civil service impartiality by taking a job with Sir Keir Starmer.” (link, paywalled)!

I can already hear the outraged cries from Labour and from the Westminster editors that this is just Tory ministers trying to discredit that good woman because she helped to take down BJ: stitch-up v stitch-up, what enticing spectacle! Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem to bother any of them that the much-vaunted ‘impartiality’ of Whitehall is turning out to be a shibboleth which we peasants must urgently made to believe in again. 

There’s more though. In the following quote there’s not just a veiled attempt, again, to take down Simon Case, there are also whiffs of institutionalised ignorance and attempts at ‘plausible deniability’ (this and the following emphases are mine):

“Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, told colleagues he would be “looking into the circumstances” of Gray’s departure, stressing that impartiality was vital to the civil service “tradition of serving governments of all parties”. Case is thought to have been unaware of Gray’s talks with Labour until Sky News broke the story on Wednesday, with senior officials said to have been unable to contact her for several hours. However, Gray had unsuccessfully sought a meeting with Case last week, in which it was thought she would have told him of her decision.” (link, paywalled)

Having relished this latest exercise in anonymous leaking, lovingly veiled by writing ‘it is thought’ and ‘it is said’, note that allegedly Ms Gray ‘unsuccessfully sought a meeting with Case’ who was, allegedly, ‘unaware’.

How stupid do these MSM propaganda writers think we are! If Case was ‘unaware’ then Ms Gray must have been able to keep her Starmer negotiations nicely secret, correct? Moreover, how do “we” know that she tried to get this meeting with Case? Did she phone him, at a time she knew he was unavailable? Did she drop him an innocuous email? I’m sure she’d not have WhatsApped him … This smells of the old excuse “the check is in the post” …

I also find it intriguing that apparently nobody in Whitehall had even the remotest inkling. After all, Starmer was known to have been ‘fishing for a mandarin’ for his office. In January, there was this report in the DM:

“Former Treasury boss Tom Scholar and ex-Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins ‘lined up for senior Labour job’ as Keir Starmer aims to add Government experience to the top of the party ahead of the next election – The two men were linked with the opposition leader’s vacant chief of staff post – After 12 years in opposition Sir Keir’s team lacks experience of Government – Sir Tom, 54, and Sir Olly, 47, both worked in No10 during New Labour years” (link)

Given that Starmer ‘got’ Ms Gray, this piece of news now looks like a squirrel, an exercise in obfuscation used by “Labour figures”, to deflect from Starmer’s real intent. This becomes clear, after the fact, in the last sentence of that article: “It is understood that while some Labour figures have floated them as candidates, neither is on the party’s radar.” (link)

And then there’s good old Charlie Moore of the DT who is trying to criticise this Gray event in the softest way, as if knuckle-rapping with a feather duster is all that’s needed. After a long piece of reminiscences he does manage to state in the end that:

 “Two things emerge. The first is that Ms Gray is showing questionable judgment. Without a background in politics, as opposed to government, she will be inexperienced in all that side of things on which Sir Keir will need much help. […] The second is that this politicisation of someone at the apex of Whitehall power is not good for the reputation of the Civil Service. It tends to confirm the suspicion of many voters that our bureaucrats are not neutral public servants, but people with political axes to grind, and that their views tend to the Remain cause and to the Left. Specifically, many will ask how long Sue Gray has been secretly negotiating to work for the Opposition, while being paid by the Government.” (paywalled link)

No, this doesn’t ‘tend to confirm …’, it effing well is proof that our suspicions were spot on! We were right, ever since the EU Referendum campaign, when we said that Whitehall was not unbiased but was working against our democratically expressed will. I’m sure we can all recall the information, right after Cameron resigned, that Whitehall had produced a lovely Remain campaign but prepared nothing in case we peasants actually voted Leave. There was no ‘Plan B’ – and we’re still living with the outcome of the ‘unbiased, non-partisan’ ‘help’ from those ‘impartial’ mandarins. 

Sorry, Sir Charles: this ‘Gray Saga’ is not about ‘ethics’ and ‘guardians of ethics’. It is about the clear, incontrovertible evidence that the cherished  image of a pristine, non-partisan Whitehall, a ‘Rolls-Royce civil service’ doing the best for our country is and has been a propaganda lie, a lie which many of us have seen through for years.

All you eminent observers of Westminster politics clearly have known about this state-of-affairs for years. You might have mentioned it in a carefully worded sentence here and there but I, for one, cannot remember one single, sustained campaign to make Whitehall’s mandarins adhere to their own ‘ethics’. I cannot recall one MSM editorial about the pernicious influence of ‘Common Purpose’ infiltrating the civil service. You can correct me if I’m wrong.

Make no mistake: this isn’t about ‘damage control’ of the tarnished image of ‘impartial Whitehall’. This is about the pernicious, incestuous relationship between partisan civil servants, partisan politicians and partisan MSM perverting our democracy at every turn. 

Now do you, all you Chief editors and Chief Opinion writers, understand why we plebs have been turning away in droves from your august publications, to find our news elsewhere? 

That’s all I have for today. Rest assured, I’ll keep my beady eyes on that lot. After all, I’ve been ‘in training’ to do so for years and my memory hasn’t been delegated to some smartphone app. Have a lovely weekend!



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