Mr Pooter Says Farewell to the Civil Service

STOP PRESS: LONDON MANDARIN RECOGNISES SNP WON ELECTION, INTEND TO CALL REFERENDUM. FUTURE OF UNITED KINGDOM UNSURE. ASTONISHING SCENES.

Lord knows what the Telegraph paid Sir Gus O’Donnell, heid neep at the civil service, for the valedictory piece published in today’s paper but if the news summary of the thing is at all accurate they’ve been had. The Telegraph’s newshounds do their best to dress it up but, really, there’s a limit to what even skilled practitioners can do with such unpromising material. They report:

Britain’s most senior civil servant Sir Gus O’Donnell has publicly questioned whether the United Kingdom will still exist in a few years’ time.

Writing in The Telegraph, Sir Gus O’Donnell asks whether the Union can survive increasing pressure for Scottish independence.

Sir Gus, who is the head of more than 440,000 civil servants in England, Scotland and Wales, says the future of the Union is one of several “enormous challenges” facing the political establishment in the coming years.

The admission from such a senior non-political figure that the break-up of Britain is now a real possibility is likely to push the issue up the political agenda.

“Over the next few years there will be enormous challenges, such as whether to keep our kingdom united,” he warns officials and politicians.

I for one am glad Sir Gus has noticed all this. Otherwise it might have happened in secret. And, please, are we supposed to believe that without this “admission” from “such a senior non-political [sic] figure” no-one would have known that “the break-up of Britain” is “now a real possibility”? Do ministers – and perhaps newspaper editors – need Gus O’Donnell to organise their “political agenda” for them? Perhaps so. (Further nit-picking: the future of the Union should properly be considered a question, not a “challenge”.)

Among Sir Gus’s other trenchant observations: the economy is not very well and could do with getting better. 

It’s all very Bagehotesque isn’t it? The civil service was supposed to be one of the great imperial glories; all this “transparency” is costly since it permits the public to look within and see just how empty it all is. Magic, what magic? Perhaps it is better to know but not, perhaps, from the civil service’s point of view.

UPDATE: On the other hand, correspondents tell me that Sir Gus has managed the London-Edinburgh relationship with considerable finesse and judgement. Furthermore, Whitehall is, quite properly, making any number of contingency plans to cover a number of potential outcomes. That’s sensible. Perhaps, if this is the case, O’Donnell’s piece is a subtle way of drawing attention to this planning.