Can anyone defeat the town-hall zombies?

Others have already swelled a chorus of rage against Rotherham -council for removing three foster children from the couple caring for them, on the grounds that the couple were members of Ukip; and the rage is justified. But few sane people will need persuading that the -council’s judgment was wrong, and I don’t intend to bang on about it. Within that statement — ‘few sane people’, etc — lies the puzzle I want to -examine.

And a puzzle it is; because those who took the decision were not insane. The fact is that the Rotherham’s Children and Young People’s Services department will be staffed by people whom we would not, on meeting, describe as abnormal; yet they and their director — who on the radio sounded like a perfectly level-headed Scottish lady — reached a reasoned judgment that to much of the rest of Britain looks crazy; and thereafter gave every impression of surprise that it should even be questioned. That’s the puzzle: who are these sane people reaching insane conclusions? How did they get like that? Why have their careers prospered?

Two clues are to be found in the following statement, not from a local government officer in Rotherham, but the elected Labour leader of the council, Roger Stone: ‘If the professionals give advice, we take it. We are going to investigate — we always would if somebody complains. We are looking to make sure all the correct procedures were carried out before the decision was made.’

The first clue lies in Cllr Stone’s preposterous ‘If the professionals give advice, we take it.’ Who does he think is in charge — the members or the officers? Councillors should be regularly questioning, often disputing and sometimes blocking officers’ decisions.