Tinker, Tailor, Banker, Spy

Project Merlin? Really? Never mind the detail of the plan to “deal with” the banks and their bonuses, my first reaction was to wonder if some Treasury chap with a sense of humour has been reading* Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy recently. Source Merlin, you will recall, peddles product Witchcraft to the Circus and nearly succeeds in bringing the whole bloody thing crashing down. Not that I’m suggesting George Osborne is Bill Haydon, of course…

Still, with grave apologies to John Le Carre for this thievery, here’s how it may have played:

From the new Control, according to the file, nothing. Perhaps he was lying low and praying it would blow over. In the lull a Treasury-gazer sourly pointed out that Whitehall had seen plenty of this in recent years: an encouraging first report, then silence, or, worse, a scandal.

These first reports were in essence background, but Witchcraft No. 4 was sixty pages long and held by the customers to be unique. It was an immensely technical Treasury appreciation of the advantages and disadvantages of negotiating with the weakened banks. The conclusion, on balance, was that by throwing the banks’ own customers a bone, the Coalition could buy useful concessions in forthcoming discussions on the future role of the City. But it seriously questioned the desirability of allowing the banks to feel too much the loser, since this could tempt the Bankers into a retributive or pre-emptive strike.  They might even move abroad. The report was from the very heart of George Osborne territory.

‘Cable’s going potty,’ Osborne told Cameron, Old Control’s successor, with contempt. ‘And if I’m not mistaken he’s also dying. It’s just a question of which gets him first.’

There was no longer any question of it. Among the chosen few who were admitted to the chambers of the Project Working Party, Merlin was already a winner. The material was accurate, often other sources confirmed it retrospectively. A Witchcraft committee formed with Osborne in the chair. Alexander was vice-chairman. Laws advised from the outside, keeping a plausible and deniable distance. Merlin had become an industry. Cameron did not need to be involved; Cable, quite deliberately, was quietly shoved aside. Oakeshott, if he had ever mattered (and this was a matter of some dispute), no longer did.

It was last May, Osborne recalled, after he came back from Corfu where he had been burying, he hoped, a previous scandal, that it began. Files lay strewn over the floor; new locks had been fitted to the windows. Someone had put the tea cosy over the one telephone and from the ceiling hung a baffler against electronic eavesdropping, a thing like an electric fan which constantly varied its pitch. By the time Osborne was ready to sweep in wielding revolution it was obvious that Gordon, so long accustomed to being Control, had become an old man.

“Tell them they’re buying their way in with counterfeit money,” Gordon would bark at Ed, barely looking up from his files. “Tell them any damn thing. I need time.”

“There are three of them and Cameron” Balls now repeated to himself, studying the leaked list of those who had been Witchcraft-cleared. The list had been retyped since Control’s death, reflecting the new arrangements and Merlin’s growing importance. Four names headed the list: Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Alexander. Three of them and Cameron, Control had said.

“Three of them and Cameron,” Balls muttered aloud. “Tell them they’re buying their way in with counterfeit money.” And if the banks accept the money? If the experts pronounce it genuine, and George Osborne praises it to the skies? And the Cabinet Office files and the opinion polls alike are full of plaudits for the brave new men of the Circus, who have finally broken the jinx? What then?

Later, Vince and Ed met in a pub in St John’s Wood. Vince had the banks, George everything else; but already in those early days of Merlin and Witchcraft, the distinction had all but vanished. Nervous breakdowns or not Vince still bore the imprimatur of the LibDem philosophy for agents in the enemy camp: self-faith, positive participation, Pied-Piper appeal and all those other uncomfortable phrases which in the high day of opposition culture had turned the Nursery into something close to a moral rearmament centre.

“So what’s the deal?” Cable asked affably.

“There isn’t one really, Vince. We feel that the present situation is unhealthy. People don’t like to see you getting mixed up in a cabal. Nor do I.”

“I’ve paid, see, Ed. You know that. I don’t know what I’ve bought with it but I’ve paid a hell of a lot. I want some back. There must have been a reason why I fell for all that spiel but I can’t quite remember what it was.”

As Vince drank – only a half-pint of mild, of course – his slightly hooded eyes slid sideways towards the fence, as if in search of someone. ‘You know Ed, as a good, if sometimes lapsed, socialist I’m going for the money. As a good capitalist, I’m sticking with the revolution, because if you can’t beat it spy on it. Don’t look like that, Ed. It’s the name of the game these days: you scratch my conscience, I’ll drive your Jag, right?’

Unlike Nick, Vince had not even bothered to lie.