Conservatives are once again doing what they do best: whining. By ‘conservatives’, I don’t mean conservatives in any meaningful sense, but conservatives in perhaps the least meaningful sense: members and supporters of the Conservative Party. The latest grist for their self-pity mill is their conviction that the government is being undermined by the Civil Service. Specifically, that politically motivated civil servants are targeting right-wingers deemed too effective at advancing conservative principles or resisting progressive causes inside government.
Victims of this vast left-wing conspiracy are said to include Suella Braverman. The Home Secretary this week dodged a ministerial code inquiry into her request that civil servants arrange a private rather than public speed awareness course after she was caught speeding in June 2022. (This is a cringe-making nothingburger of a story and another reminder that Britain is a deeply unserious country.) Another target of the radicalised Sir Humphreys is supposedly Boris Johnson. The former prime minister has been reported to police again after Cabinet Office civil servants suspected further breaches of the Covid rules on his part. This was done without reference to ministers and a Johnson spokesman has branded it a ‘clearly politically motivated attempt to manufacture something out of nothing’.
No doubt some civil servants try to undermine the government’s policy agenda, but they don’t put half as much effort into it as the government itself
There may well be an element within the Civil Service that is politically and culturally progressive, hostile to Brexit, swayed by identity politics and generally averse to Tory politicians and Tory policies. In fact, it’s hard to believe that such a vast workforce, made up of people who have sought a career in government, doesn’t harbour a goodly number of political activists. Being part of the ruling elite, it shouldn’t surprise us if senior civil servants adhere to the ideology of that elite: progressivism.
The suspicion that political bias or simple arrogance compels some civil servants to obstruction, political axe-grinding or even insubordination is not exclusive to the right. Tony Benn recounted a conversation after his appointment as Industry Secretary with his Permanent Secretary, Anthony Part. Part, a Harrow- and Cambridge-educated career civil servant, said: ‘I take it you are not going to implement the manifesto’. Benn claimed Part attempted to thwart ministerial proposals he disapproved of.
While Benn was ever-paranoid he may just have got the measure of Part, who described the role of the Civil Service as ‘influencing ministers towards the common ground’ and ‘trying to have a sense of what can succeed for Britain’. More recently, in 2019, Tribune published an op-ed by an anonymous civil servant, who claimed his colleagues laughed at the prospect of a Corbyn government in meetings and would ‘resist’ if one came about. If civil servants spend their days frustrating Jeremy Corbyn, Suella Braverman and Boris Johnson, it’s hard to get too worked up about it. It’s the most productive thing some of them have done in a long time.
The Civil Service doesn’t do itself any favours. Sue Gray’s decision to go from penning a damning report on a Tory government to working for the Labour opposition still leaves an unpleasant taste. Reports of disquiet among officials when their secretaries of state withdraw their departments from Stonewall’s ‘diversity scheme’ do not help either. For all the focus on making Parliament more representative, the Civil Service remains thoroughly class-ridden. In 2019, just 18 per cent of senior civil servants came from low socio-economic backgrounds. It was the first time this data had been collected since 1967, when the figure was… 19 per cent. The leadership of the Civil Service is far removed from the country it governs.
Even so, right-wingers should pause before joining the Conservative chorus against this institution. On purely transactional terms, why go to bat for Braverman and Johnson? What have either of them done for you? She talks tough on boats but in the nine months she’s been in the job, 28,000 migrants have arrived in the UK via small boat. He’s Mr Brexit apparently, but he bowed to demands from Brussels and enforced a border in the Irish Sea, abandoning Northern Ireland’s Unionists, one of the most patriotic demographics on these islands. More to the point, if the Tories are being obstructed or targeted by lefty civil servants, why don’t they use their 64-seat majority and do something about it? Tory ministers address apparent Civil Service bias in the same way they do ‘wokeness’: they won’t lift a finger to remedy it but they’ll have a grand old bellyache about it.
Right-wingers who want to reform the Civil Service or replace it with US-style political appointees should be very clear on their reasons. If you believe alternative models would function better, have at it. If you simply want to remove what you see as a shackle on Conservative governments, you will probably end up disappointed. No doubt some civil servants try to undermine the government’s policy agenda, but they don’t put half as much effort into it as the government itself. It wasn’t civil servants who shelved plans to decriminalise non-payment of the BBC licence fee. That was Boris Johnson. It wasn’t civil servants who blocked the privatisation of Channel 4. That was Michelle Donelan. It wasn’t civil servants who declared that ‘transwomen are women’ or backed gender changes at 16. That was Penny Mordaunt and Gillian Keegan, respectively. Gut the civil service all you like: the Tory party will still be the Tory party.
As an adherent of the rapidly imploding philosophy of liberalism, I have some sympathy with right-wingers watching their values under assault from all quarters. But they have to stop looking for bogeymen, or at least the wrong ones. The reason right-wing votes do not translate to right-wing outcomes is not a politicised civil service, bolshie lawyers, or ‘woke’ charities, though all may contribute. The reason is that right-wing votes keep going to a party that does not believe in right-wing outcomes. The Conservative Party is not your party. You don’t have a party anymore.
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