Boris and Cummings: A Pact of Steel

Rachel Wolf wrote a piece in yesterday’s Telegraph entitled ‘Whitehall is woefully unprepared for Dominic Cummings’ true plan to reform the state’.

A piece of fashion advice Rachel, you are obviously a smart lady, but have a word with whoever put this picture with your article. The longer hair is nice, and you have a fecund complexion, but it don’t half make you look vacant. There’s no need to go the trout pout, Groucho Marx eyebrows, and Insta effects route, the picture on your Public First profile is fine.

In fact I like that picture, as it demonstrates the ability of the camera to capture a subject — the burning witty intelligence of the eyes, the slightly crinkled smile of a person grown used to struggling with intransigent bureaucracy, and the neat, functional, style of a busy person wondering why they have to have their photo taken for a website when they have better things to do.

And given that she is working with Dominic Cummings, a man so obsessed he didn’t wear cuff links when appearing before a Commons Select Committee, it is understandable that she should just throw on a blouse (I’m guessing teal), ornament with a bead necklace, and then get down to the hard business of being stimulated by data.

I would love to tell you what Ms Wolf said in her article, but I’m not paying the Barclay brothers to get behind the paywall. And besides I already know. And so do you if you have read the Conservative Manifesto. A document infinitely shorter than the Communist Manifesto, and infinitely more useful because it doesn’t actually say anything at all.

To quote Lewis Carroll, “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’”

Which makes Miss Wolf’s problem glasses somewhat problematic for the problematic people who when approaching the problem of the fragile, ovoid, bloated, and obliquely under-precise in precision civil service is to say, “so what you are saying is…” in a desperate attempt to find themselves somehow correct in their shock and error.

Given the superb level of trolling in the Conservative election campaign, I was somewhat disappointed that if what Dominic Cummings said to the IPPR, about a cabinet of seven ministers, is true: that would imply the new ‘Super Ministeries’ would be either six or seven in number. I so hoped there would be four; Love, Peace, Plenty and Truth. But I suppose we will just have to forgo the epic freak out from those warning of a dystopian future and settle instead for Love, Peace, Plenty, Truth, Sneezy, Mick and Titch.

Though news that Civil Servants will be required to take exams to prove they are are to up speed has shocked some. And no doubt others will be stunned at the idea of remaining in post for longer than eighteen months, as a way of retaining expertise and holding people responsible. How will they know if they are doing well? How will they know if they are rising in their careers? Isn’t this a bit like a job?

That is assuming they have a job.

For according to Mr Cummings somewhere between a third and two-thirds of civil servants do nothing of any value, and could be dispensed with… why…. there will be marches, protests, rallies. Billy Bragg (what a sell out he is) will write dirges, Bea Campbell will emerge from her cryogenic tank to bewail the plight of memo-writers’ wives in Surrey and Berks forced into hardship. Impassioned articles about the lack of M&S ready meals available in the Surbiton food bank will tug the heart strings of Northern Liberals, who will stand in solidarity with their Southern comrades gathered around a brazier on the Whitehall picket line.

Radio 4 will run a series of special programs in which fourth and fifth generation civil servants recount the passing of a way of life. They will speak of the bonds, the catastrophes, those who lost their lives in filing cabinet disasters, and the vindictiveness of the class struggle against them. The betrayal of the Oxbridge lads will be on everyone lips, whose only option was to follow their father’s down the Whitehall pit to battle bravely in a lifetime of graft and dirty work. Tear emoji stained emails, speckled by the butter drips of crumpets emoji, will flood in to Feedback, and the outcry will be so great Radio 4 will cancel all programming, except Woman’s Hour, to replay the series endlessly. And only when it is too late — when Boris has proved what a fascist he is by getting the trains to run on time — will we realise just what we have lost.

And then in a generation (or two), aspiring politicians will pitch their leadership campaign by retelling how they were born into a family without hope of a peerage, whose father had lost his job as a differential egg production inspection officer (grade 3)…

Of course what we must not mention is….

Do you remember when we used to be told that if we didn’t pay people like this high salaries, they would go and work somewhere else? That they had skills in such high demand that they could literally work anywhere.

The only real issue if Thomas Cromwell… sorry… Dominic Cummings,does go through with his plans is what will happen to the buildings… AirBnB might be a useful way of bringing in money to the treasury…. they might need to do something about the green and beige decor though.

Oh btw…. is it just me… and I don’t want to get all Dr Who about things… but isn’t it odd how much of what the Conservatives are supposedly planning to do, comes out of, or could easily have been in, the 1983 Labour Manifesto. It’s almost like generational shift is a real thing…