Britain is plagued by dysfunctional institutions – and Labour is part of the problem

As the WhatsApp revelations are daily drip-fed to the public, the leader of the opposition refuses ten times to disclose the chronology of his discussions with Sue Gray and the government prepares to make a fool of itself, yet again, with another futile plan to end illegal immigration, it becomes transparently evident that Britain’s once vaunted system of governance has collapsed into incoherence and worse.

It would be inaccurate to say that the WhatsApp insights into the incompetence and infantile infighting among politicians and civil servants during the Covid pandemic have shocked the public: disgusted, yes, but when it comes to issues of government and the politicians who conduct them, the public is by now unshockable, though its distaste for the political class is growing exponentially.

When a torrent of revelations establishes that, in a time of national lockdown, Boris Johnson was the least worst performer among the many actors in that farce, that tells us all we need to know about the calibre of our political class. It would be unfair, however, to deny Matt Hancock his pre-eminence among the nasties and incompetents whose chief preoccupation was to tighten control over the population and deny the public any access to the truth.

Impossible to shorten the 14 days’ quarantine, otherwise people will know we got it wrong; necessary to sack so-and-so for not being a team player and sticking to the establishment lies; tell that maverick MP who is questioning our policies he risks losing a centre for children with learning difficulties in his constituency… The methods of the Mafia were translated into government practice.

In the old days of ping-pong politics, the electorate at least cherished the notion that a failing government could be replaced by an opposition whose hunger for office would cause it to raise its game. In reality, that seldom happened, except in 1979. But it has been left to Labour under Keir Starmer to pioneer an entirely new abuse: contriving to debauch the governmental process before even taking office.

It beggars belief that Labour, which read the last rites over parliamentary democracy because Boris ingested a slice of birthday cake, has been exposed as riding roughshod over all ethical considerations to recruit the supposedly neutral Sue Gray as Starmer’s chief of staff. This is an outrage. The post of chief of staff is pivotal to Labour’s attempt to regain government; for that position to be held by someone supposedly apolitical (hence her appointment to investigate “partygate”) who comes fresh from the inner counsels of government – as Second Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office – with particular knowledge of any ethical issues haunting Tory politicians, is a gross abuse of the system.

Sir Vernon Bogdanor has branded the situation as “unprecedented and unconstitutional”, which it undoubtedly is. What happened to the duty of impartiality under the Civil Service Code and the Director of Civil Service Guidance which requires any contact by officials with opposition parties to be approved by ministers? Did that happen? Did Sue Gray notify her job offer to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba)? And what happened to the quarantine period between leaving a government post and taking up employment that involves a conflict of interest?

The Sue Gray case is a useful illustration of the anti-Conservative bias of the Civil Service. The cross-party Privileges Committee investigating “partygate”, whose findings could eventually lead to Boris Johnson facing a by-election, has relied heavily on Sue Gray’s report on the matter. How much credibility would be commanded by a report denouncing a Conservative prime minister, written by the leader of the Labour Party’s chief of staff? The whole “partygate” hysteria was always absurd: this reduces it to a belly laugh.

The individual with many questions to answer is Sir Keir Starmer. Unfortunately, he is not very good at answering questions. On LBC Radio he refused ten times to answer the question of when he first approached Sue Gray. Everyone knows what that ineffectual evasion means. We have here the beginnings of a major constitutional and political scandal that has already demonstrated Starmer’s political ineptitude. How can he denounce Tory abuses when, almost two years before a general election, he has discredited any prospect of Labour running a more ethical government than the Tories?

Starmer, with a cack-handedness unexpected in a former Director of Public Prosecutions, has destroyed Labour’s trump card – the expectation of better government from his party – and given new life to the sceptical “The one’s as bad as the other” mantra, potentially fatal to Labour’s hopes.

The Civil Service is in desperate need of reform. Not so long ago, media editors were shy about contributors writing about “the deep state”, a supposed conspiracy theory. Today, the deep state lies exposed in plain sight and l’affaire Gray is just the latest, most insolent manifestation of that sinister, anti-democratic phenomenon. The Civil Service demonstrates the monopolist, monocultural mentality of the elitist Left; in that respect, it strikingly resembles the BBC. Both institutions have most culpably been allowed by Conservative governments to remain unreformed.

For a start, the Civil Service is too large. In imperial times, a civil service that never exceeded 1,200 men governed India, with a population of more than 300 million; today, it takes 510,000 civil servants to govern Britain, with a population of just 67 million. Those officials constitute an oppressive groupthink (how many Tories are there in civil service posts?) and are past masters at obstructing any projects of a conservative character.

Yet we regularly hear Sir Bufton drivelling on about “the finest civil service in the world, professional and impartial…” They are at it still: Conservative MP Jackie Doyle-Price said of the Sue Gray case on WhatsApp on Monday: “This anti-Whitehall pile-on is simply burning our constitution.” Stockholm Syndrome does not come any more extravagant than that: the Tory desire to succour the enemy appears inextinguishable. The people who are burning the constitution inhabit Whitehall and anybody who does not recognise that reality is unfit to be a Conservative MP.

It is that same Stockholm Syndrome that has made the Tories incapable of handling the crisis of illegal immigration. Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman are going through the latest charade of passing new legislation to block “the small boats” – a term that abuses the memory of the original small boats of Dunkirk – with the same predictable outcome. The Home Secretary has admitted her latest cunning plan “pushes the boundaries of international law”. The legal fraternity is already forecasting that the new law will be challenged again and again in the courts.

Of course it will. Because our membership of the ECHR totally vitiates any attempt to control our borders. The dogs in the street know that, as do Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman. Membership of the ECHR is totally incompatible with defending our borders. Passing any new law is an empty PR gimmick, so long as we continue to surrender our sovereignty to the ECHR. Why do the Tories persist in this charade? Do they imagine it will fool Red Wall voters, whose intelligence they ludicrously underestimate?

Attempting to control illegal immigration while retaining membership of the ECHR is like trying to drive with the brakes on. Sir Robert Buckland, former justice secretary, said this week that, without the ECHR, it would be “a bit of a free-for-all for everybody to try and do their own thing”. That’s called sovereignty, Sir Robert, with Britain doing its own thing: not being able to do our own thing is the cause of the immigration problem. Brexit is about Britain doing its own thing. The EU and the ECHR are about foreign politicians and judges imposing their own thing on Britain.

The instinctive aversion of a former Tory justice secretary to Britain exercising its sovereign rights further illustrates the grip that Stockholm Syndrome has on the Conservative Party – now a wholly owned subsidiary of the “progressive consensus”. That is why the effete Conservative Party will not renounce the ECHR (though this country has withdrawn from similar treaties at an average of two a year since 1988), will not scrap the Northern Ireland Protocol and will not exceed a double-figure representation in the House of Commons after the next general election.

Parliament, the Civil Service, the Conservative Party: all the wells have been poisoned and British public life is now a zombie ambiance. The Labour Party has just shown itself to be an intrinsic feature of that corrupt landscape. Unless and until the British public, which already recognises the problem, takes the solution into its own hands, a deeply dystopian future lies ahead of us.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life