Whitehall may not resemble the glitzy allure of Las Vegas, yet recent happenings in the upper echelons of the civil service bring to mind a notable day from 2003 when the renowned animal trainers, Siegfried and Roy, faced an unexpected challenge. During a performance at the Mirage, Mantacore, their 28-stone white tiger, decided he had had enough of his flamboyantly dressed handlers. In a shocking turn, the tiger clamped onto Roy’s neck, piercing his jugular and dragging him offstage, much to the horror of the audience.
Remarkably, Roy survived the ordeal, though he was never quite the same, leading to the closure of the show. As for Mantacore, he lived out his days until the age of 17, eventually passing away peacefully at Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden animal sanctuary.
Despite the gruesome nature of the incident, one could understand Mantacore’s perspective. Siegfried and Roy, for all their fame, were arguably asking for trouble. Claiming to have truly tamed a tiger was a bold assertion, and perhaps Mantacore’s reaction was inevitable.
This scenario invites a parallel with the situation involving Sir Keir Starmer and the civil service mandarins. Much like the animal trainers, Sir Keir might have assumed his position was secure and beyond reproach.
For an extended period, he courted senior civil servants with promises that aligned with their interests. Surely, he thought, his pro-European stance and support for public-sector benefits would earn their loyalty and admiration.
However, civil servants are governed by their inherent nature. They may appear cooperative for a time, but eventually, their instincts take over, and with a sudden shift, the once confident handler finds himself caught off guard.
For righties, the past few days have been entertaining. To see that prim prig Starmer attacked by the Whitehall pooh-bahs was delicious. And how they turned on him, miaow, miaow!
There is an unofficial trade union of former Cabinet secretaries (top job in the civil service) and most of them, naturally, are now lords. Last Monday, when a squirming Sir Keir gave a parliamentary statement on the Mandelson affair, the peers’ gallery of the Commons was packed with those former Sir Humphrys.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing the most severe crisis of his premiership following revelations that Lord Peter Mandelson was poorly vetted for the US Ambassadorship
The aged magnificos had come to glower and gloat. This continued on the airwaves. Former Whitehall grandees Lord Sedwill and Lord McDonald (a slim-hipped tale-teller who helped topple Boris Johnson) demanded that Sir Olly Robbins be reinstated as permanent secretary of the Foreign Office. The Institute of Government, an important silo of Blob-ism, has talked of little else.
Sir Olly, 51, is the tragic sap who was sacked after neglecting to tell the PM that official vetters had the screaming abdabs when they inspected Peter Mandelson’s background.
A brittle Sir Keir had a paddy when he learned of this omission. It was ‘unacceptable’ he had not been told of such security doubts over his choice of ambassador to the US. Exit Sir Olly, pursued by his employment lawyer.
The same Sir Olly Robbins was once chief EU-exit negotiator for Theresa May and was seen at that time by eurosceptics as an obstacle to a swifter, cleaner Brexit. Back in the dog days of the May government Sir Keir was hot, hot, hot for Sir Olly. Now he had sacked him.
On Tuesday, a slightly pop-eyed Sir Olly appeared at the Commons foreign affairs select committee. He was bereft at losing a job he had clinched after 24 years of hard toil. He mentioned pressures on his ‘wonderful family’. The day before had been his birthday, boo-hoo. We all threw our gaze to the ceiling to compose ourselves.
Only the coldest cur – such, perhaps, as Sir Keir – could have failed to be moved. Sir Olly duly received a sympathetic press.
Tories rose in the Commons later that day, during a debate initiated by an on-fire Kemi Badenoch, to defend Sir Olly from our brutish premier. It was also said that Sir Keir’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, swore at Sir Olly’s predecessor, Sir Philip Barton. Sir Philip will himself give evidence to MPs on Tuesday. Having seen the old boy at previous committees, I recommend that you brace yourselves for a torrent of tedium.
Succulent as all this kerfuffle is, were Sir Olly and the Foreign Office truly without fault? Did No 10’s dash to appoint Mandelson not make it all the more vital Sir Keir know – and quickly – of any risks to national security?
Mandelson himself received a £75,000 payoff after he was removed as US ambassador over his long-standing ties to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein
Was Sir Olly trying to be a yes-man, granting his own approval of Mandy against vetting advice in order to help No 10? Did he think it might help him one day become Cabinet secretary? Right-wing politicians should not become carried away by this scandal.
Yes, it shows Sir Keir in an unattractive light, and he may well now have to depart the scene. But it has also exposed the inertia and opacity of Whitehall.
On Thursday, the chief operating officer of the civil service, Cat Little, did her own turn before MPs. She was dreadful: a passive-aggressive automaton, a spouter of technocratic negativity, a gold-medal backside coverer whose darting eyes and frozen pauses illustrated why so little gets achieved by the British state.
We saw a world where nothing is easy, everything must be triple-checked, where minutes are taken of every cough and splutter (until the really dodgy decisions, when minutes mysteriously go missing), a world in which departments block one another, decisions are delayed and where, understandably enough, political advisers end up screaming at these merchants of mucilage.
Nigel Farage has asked his colleague Danny Kruger to plan an overhaul of Whitehall. If Reform ever enters government, what hope would lonely Mr Kruger have against the battalions of Robbinses and Littles and Bartons?
When the Conservatives were in office they often complained about being scuppered by the Blob.
The only person who managed to defeat them, briefly, was Dominic Cummings, himself a complex character. They soon did for him.
Former insiders of the Coalition and Cameron governments recall what a frustrating time ministers had with mandarins such as Sir Robert Devereux at Work and Pensions, Dame Helen Ghosh at the Home Office and Martin Donnelly at both Business and International Trade.
The UK’s top diplomat Olly Robbins was effectively sacked as the ‘furious’ PM claimed he was not told Peter Mandelson failed security vetting
Last week Philip Rycroft, the civil servant once entrusted with leading our departure from the EU, outed himself as a Rejoiner. Were Sir Olly Robbins to be reinstated it would become even harder for ministers to impose the democratic will on such gluey functionaries.
Whitehall has become the place that loves to say no. It regards bureaucratic process as a professional end in itself. And it pays.
Three new Knights of the Garter were announced last week. They included Lord O’Donnell, the former Cabinet secretary who became a near-unhinged opponent of the Leave vote and who, sure enough, was up on his hind legs in recent days to denounce Downing Street’s treatment of Sir Olly.
Gus bloomin’ O’Donnell a Knight of the Garter! It’s the mandarin’s equivalent of retirement to Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden.
