It’s not been a good week for Sir Keir’s lefty lot. In the last few days alone, Starmer’s army has been hit with the revelation that over half of all Brits feel disappointed by Labour’s achievements in government so far – while just hours ago, a new survey by FindOutNow saw Nigel Farage’s Reform party surge to second place, overtaking the current government of the day. And now the beast that is Labour’s cronyism row threatens to rear its head once more.
Steerpike would remind readers that back in 2020, every Permanent Secretary co-signed the grandly-named ‘Declaration of Government Reform’ in June 2020, promising to usher in a new era of transparency, meritocracy and excellence in the palaces of Whitehall. It promised that ‘all senior appointments to public competition by default’ will be ‘advertised in such a way as to ensure the widest pool of applicants.’
Yet in response to a written question from the Conservative party’s John Glen – who enquired after the proportion of jobs at No. 10 which had been advertised externally since the election – the Cabinet Office revealed that of the 20 job vacancies that had arisen, only eight of these had been subject to open competition. In short, 60 per cent of Downing Street’s jobs have only been made available to internal applicants since the Starmtroopers took power. Hardly a transparent government in practice, eh?
In defence of the admission, Georgia Gould MP added that: ‘The 12 vacancies that were not advertised externally were either for short term cover (3-6 months and one was a slightly longer maternity cover) or for roles that required extensive and specific Civil Service knowledge and experience.’ It doesn’t change the facts of the matter, however…
The update comes after the Telegraph reported that more than 200 ‘cronies’ had been appointed to the civil service without open competition since the July poll – meaning that the Labour government had appointed approximately two exceptional hires for every day of Starmer’s premiership until the story broke. The biggest culprit was the Home Office – with a staggering 109 appointments made without open competition – tailed by the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health with 43 and 29 declared internal appointments each. Golly.
While the rules for appointing civil service jobs may differ to those governing who works in No. 10, there certainly appears an interesting trend emerging amongst the lefty lot. So much for equal opportunity, eh?
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