While we mourn, life goes on, especially in Whitehall …

 

It’s a damp and grey morning, suitable for the day when the coffin of the Queen will go to London, follwong the ceremonies and the respect and grief shown by the people in Scotland. The papers are printing photos of yesterday’s events on their front pages (link), as do the MSM online editions.

The opinion piece writers are again out in force. Some are utterly  infantile, like Ms Tominey in the DT, wailing:

“Queen Elizabeth would have wanted Prince Harry to wear military uniform at her funeral – Decision not to allow the Duke of Sussex to wear the Blues and Royals uniform will be viewed by the public as a petty and unnecessary snub” (paywalled link)

Amazing, isn’t it, how that lady ‘knows’ what the Queen would have wanted! If there’s one thing I’ve come to loathe deeply it’s columns such as this one. However, not all are like this. Charles Moore, also in the DT, writes about the address of King Charles III to both houses yesterday, and to the swearing of allegiance of MPs and Lords. His observations are important and I’m quoting at length, for the record:

“The fortune of a nation depends upon the allegiance which people, and especially legislators, give to the structure of the state. That is best symbolised by a non-political head of state rather than a party-political figure.

Both the Speakers in Westminster Hall yesterday reminded us that the sovereign defends our liberties. Odd that it falls to a hereditary, unelected person to do this, yet history has made it so at least, as Mr Speaker Hoyle pointed out, since 1688. At the heart of a successful state, there has to be something that most people do not want to argue about. If that deep thing is secure, you can have any amount of fierce argument on top of it (as is seen in the House of Commons).

The weak point of a hereditary system is the moment of succession, because someone might, as in a relay race, drop the baton.

Because of the new King’s two public utterances so far – one of them being yesterday’s – and also because of his public appearances, we already know that the baton has not been dropped. As the Houses of Parliament formally recognised the new reality, I could see the British constitution working before my eyes. I felt the country was secure.” (paywalled link)

Surely I’m not the only one who hopes that Charles Moore’s words will turn out to be correct in the coming weeks and months. There’s also a comment piece by the historian Andrew Roberts in the DT, worth mentioning. The headlines stand for the whole article:

“In silent crowds and long queues, we see a Britain many feared was lost – Dignified mourning for the late Queen reminds us that traditional British instincts remain the same” (paywalled link).

But life has the unromantic habit of going on, the world doesn’t stop while we mourn. The Westminster MSM have perfected the way of not writing about events when doing so might endanger their precious ‘senior sources’ from drying up. The death of Queen Elizabeth II was and is the perfect ‘excuse’ for their disregarding the sacking of the Treasury top mandarin last week. Given the dire state of the economy it is surprising that this hasn’t received the comments one would have expected.

However, Lord Agnew of Oulton, a minister of state at the Cabinet Office and the Treasury 2020-22, has written a brief comment piece for The Times today. It has the promising title “PM was right to sack Tom Scholar from the Treasury” (link, paywalled). Far from being a ‘sour-grapes’ piece or a piece of ‘Truss all the way’, he justifies this sacking with points which made my jaw drop.

I am going to quote at length from this article, for the record, because this assessment comes from an insider, from someone who has experienced the conditions at the Treasury:

“While there has been an understandable outpouring of sadness at the death of Queen Elizabeth, the removal of Sir Tom Scholar as the lead permanent secretary at the Treasury should be a cause for celebration.

Having worked in his department for nearly two years I saw at first hand the malign influence of the Treasury orthodoxy at play. Whether it was foot-dragging and passive resistance to creating a Treasury office in the north (in Darlington), which he fiercely resisted, or the botched arrangements in the construction of the bounce back loans during the pandemic, all roads led back to him.

It is not surprising to hear cries of dismay at his dismissal from an echo chamber of former mandarins, because that is what they mostly are: a metropolitan elite with their own self-reinforcing prejudices.” (link, paywalled)

Well! I’m now feeling good because this is precisely what I’ve been banging on about for years. The next paragraphs are a specific critique of the Treasury:

“I hope very much that our new prime minister will build on her excellent decision and remove responsibility from the Treasury for driving economic growth. It has no idea how to deliver this. The system obsesses about measuring inputs, counting out the money distributed to departments, but has little clue of how to measure outcomes. Departments are infantilised in their management of money, with savings being automatically clawed back to the centre. This of course removes any incentive to think innovatively, creatively or cost-effectively.

Many would say that it is up to elected ministers to impose their will and that the upper echelons of the civil service are entirely neutral in their political views. This is nonsense. Mandarins have a very strong view of how the world should look and will use every lever available to ensure that their prejudices prevail.” (link, paywalled)

It’s gratifying to see that someone who was ‘in the know’ acknowledges indirectly that it’s the mandarins who govern while our elected representatives are allowing them to do so. Is it because the low calibre of ministers and MPs, or is it because they’re all scared stiff of ‘looking bad’ in the MSM? Here are the concluding paragraphs:

“A couple of vignettes. It took the Home Office three years to convince the Treasury that golden visas (to encourage inward investment) were being issued to bad actors or even possible criminals, and that the system needed to be redesigned or stopped. In another row, the Treasury refused to support the Department for Work and Pensions in properly resourcing it to claw back Covid-related Universal Credit fraud. This was even when confronted with the reality that, without extra resources, it would take seven years.

There are many excellent civil servants in Whitehall and I was privileged to work with dozens of them in the Department for Education, the Cabinet Office, HMRC and the Treasury. Tom Scholar was not one of them.” (link, paywalled)

Let’s disregard the disclaimer: “not all mandarins …” – he would say that, wouldn’t he. Let’s keep in mind though that the top mandarins, especially in the other big offices of state, the HO, the MoD and FO, are of a similar calibre and mindset. 

Sadly, we know only too well that one swallow does not a summer make. While there might be hope for the economy, I am wary because, who knows, perhaps this is simply a ‘palace revolution’ of mandarins. Still, as long as there’s hope …



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