Impartial Civil Service under attack

Two reasons why we should worry about the latest reshuffles First,

As Frost and his team of a dozen-plus negotiators headed to Brussels by train on Sunday, it was being revealed that Boris Johnson had given him a new role (and a peerage) as his national security adviser....The timing of Frost’s appointment could not have been more pointed. Although the vacancy has arisen because of the resignation of the cabinet secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, on Sunday night, giving the post to someone who is leading arguably the most important international talks since the Iraq war in 2003 sends a strong message to Brussels that the UK is prepared to walk away if a deal cannot be struck in summer talks.

A plaintive note to end, possibly indicating the dismay felt by all nice people with Johnson's determination:

Is there any hope?
Yes. It is hoped that five weeks of face-to-face meetings might yield results as they allow more nuanced discussions in informal meeting in corridors and over dinners.

Chaps will have a chance to just get along with other chaps and leave out all the nasty divisive stuff. KitKat anyone?

Vote Leave is now in Downing Street, [how did that happen I wonder] and Brexit is being repurposed to destabilise officials’ authority by casting their reasonable objections as signs of how out of step they are with voters’ mood

Pretty well unarguably out of step I would have thought -- but only with that misguided and racist majority who voted Brexit and then Tory.

If this ideological cleansing via hostile anonymised briefing is allowed to continue unchecked, it will blow away the defining qualities of the British civil service: political neutrality and recruitment on the basis of merit...

Who could disgaree with that assessment of the defining qualities? Poor old civil servants might even have to abandon their heroic and priestly mission

The departures at the top of the civil service in recent weeks will have a chilling effect on officials lower down the food chain, who may think again about speaking truth to power.

Pretty shamefacedly apologetic and uncritical all round, far from 'an analysis that has authority and integrity', although there is one sentence:

 It is true that these ideals have been chipped away for decades

I'll say. We can all see that now, of course, after such partisanship during Brexit.

The link alleging 'ideological cleansing' is to a piece by B Kerslake (president of the Local Government Association and former head of the civil service and permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government)

After decryig the cowardly business of briefing  against harmless civil servants who cannot answer back, and who never leak or brief themselves,  he says:

As well as specific briefing against Sedwill though, there has been another even more unpleasant line of attack: the performance of the whole civil service during the pandemic has apparently been judged and found wanting. 

I think the GUardian, Newsnight and C4 News might all be implicated in that, athough they have done their best to personalise it, of course.

The real problem, though is this:

Worse still, this government seems to be preparing to use the difficulties of delivering Brexit and the shortcomings in handling the pandemic as reasons for undermining civil servants’ impartiality [!]

 A pretty popular campaign if they do take them on, I would have thought

Merkel speaks -- but what does she say?

A strange tone, which is my special interest after all, to the story in teh Graun today:

The UK will have to “live with the consequences” of Boris Johnson ditching Theresa May’s plan to maintain close economic ties with the EU after Brexit, Angela Merkel has said, hardening her tone over the prospect of a no-deal scenario at the end of the year.

Stating the bleedin obvious, but with a threat? The Graun tells us what it might 'really mean', 'in effect'

Coming in the week of the fourth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the change of rhetoric from within the chancellory also appears to quash renewed speculation in the British press that Merkel could seek to soften Brussel’s red lines to secure a last-minute deal.

And for those who have not been following, or who have returned exhausted from a hard week of statue-deinstalling:

Negotiations between the UK and EU are in deadlock over whether Britain needs to tie itself to the EU’s developing state aid rules and common environmental, social and labour standards in return for a zero-tariff trade deal.

Same as it's been all along of course.

There is also a little more insight on the Euro bailout:

On 18 May, Merkel surprised even party colleagues in her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) by teaming up with Emmanuel Macron to push for a European recovery fund worth €500bn (£448bn)....“In a crisis of this magnitude, each and every one of us is expected to do what needs to be done. What needs to be done in this case is something extraordinary. Germany had a low debt ratio and can afford, in this extraordinary situation, to take on some more debt. It is also very important to us to keep the programme within the bounds of the European treaties. We have found a way to do that.”

Merkel and Macron’s initiative faces resistance from Austria, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. Even if they can sway the “frugal four”, in the coming months there is likely to be a scramble for access to recovery packag [sic] funds.

 Some suggest Merkel’s seeming reinvention from arch-austerian to big spender has been forced by the German constitutional court’s ruling on 5 May, questioning the legality of the European Central Bank’s bond-buying programme, and thus the entirety of the EU’s legal regime....

Then a mysterious bit, surely requiring...oh I don't know...'factual information, and analysis that has authority and integrity'. Instead, what looks like journalism by press handout:

“Without a doubt, European law has precedence over national law – but that does not tell us where the realm of European law begins and ends,” said Merkel. “The essence of the European Union lies in the member states transferring powers. In the borderland between the spheres of jurisdiction of national and European law, friction can occur if the European level defines its limits more broadly than, for example, the German Parliament does. That’s what we are seeing in the ECB case.”...While the ruling of the constitutional court in Karlsruhe represented “a conflict”, Merkel said, it did not fundamentally challenge the legal order of the EU: “That is the nature of the beast, since a nation state will always be able to lay claim to particular powers unless all powers are transferred to the European institutions, which is surely not going to happen.”

Even the Germans are having doubts about full integration? I missed some of the details myself about the ruling exposing a difference between the German courts and the European Central Bank. The Graun covered it in May:

Germany’s constitutional court jolted eurozone investors and hit the value of the euro after judges warned that the European Central Bank’s plans to flood the financial system with cheap credit could breach German law...The bombshell ruling by the court in Karlsruhe came after judges agreed that Germany’s central bank must stop cooperating with the ECB’s long-running stimulus scheme within the next three months unless the ECB could prove it was not excessive.

 “An optimistic interpretation could be this is lots of barking without biting and that everything is fine as long as the ECB demonstrates that it has thought through the economic consequences of its decisions. But a pessimistic interpretation could be that no amount of additional ECB analysis will convince German judges and could, therefore, spell the end of QE [quantitiative easing] ”

the decision highlighted the constraints on the ECB as a lender of last resort compared with the more independent US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England

EU criticised in Guardian, shock -- and nearly explicitly

More important emerging issues from the talks:

Brexit talks hit by row over EU subsidies for farmers

Exclusive: Brussels accused of trying to stop UK government from defending British farmers

Most unlike the Guardian to put it that way in the subheading! Normally it would be more like 'UK runs risk of food shortages by catastrophic break with EU policy'.Unusual slant here too:

 The row centres on the EU’s demand for what it is claimed would be an unprecedented commitment not to retaliate through tariffs on European goods even where it could be potentially shown that British farmers are being unfairly undercut.

'Unfairly undercut', yet!

For the duration of the current parliament, farmers will be paid subsidies at the same rate as the EU – around £3bn a year....clauses contained in the European commission’s draft legal text for a future trade deal. [include]...unrestricted subsidies, known as “green box payments”, include direct income supports for farmers that are not related to production levels or prices. They also include environmental protection and regional development programmes....The EU has over time hugely increased the proportion of its subsidies that it regards as being green box payments, often in the face of opposition from rival producers....In 2018, the US Department of Commerce imposed a 17.13% anti-dumping duty on Spanish olives claiming that they were being sold at unfairly low prices as a consequence of green box payments.

Two clauses in the EU’s proposed free trade deal with the UK would have both sides agree that such funds are not in effect price distorting and cannot be countered with “anti-subsidy proceedings nor be subjected to price or cost adjustments in anti-dumping investigations”...[legislating for the future as always] The UK negotiating team led by David Frost has in response argued that such a clause would limit the government’s ability to protect the British farming industry....

The EU has previously sought to have similar provisions, known as a “peace clause” by trade experts, inserted into prospective trade deals with Australia and New Zealand but they do not exist in any current agreements...Maria Wiggerthale, a researcher on trade for Oxfam in Germany who has studied the potential price-distorting impact of the EU’s green box payments, said: “There is no reason why there should be such an external ‘peace clause’ for the EU.

In the old days,el Grun or the Civil Service would surely have defended the EU on the grounds that these payments protect the environment, and therefore, like everything else European, must be farsighted and wise. And anyway we could still get cheap English strawberries as long as wages for the pickers did not rise.

Happy anniversary

The Referendum vote was 4 years ago today. Are Remainers finally ready to accept they lost? Perhaps more than we might expect, at least for one columnist in teh Graun...

It's been four years since the Brexit vote: everything and nothing has changed 

It's starts with the expected line:

the rupture promises to be far more severe than many observers expected at the time.

But there are a few signs that might be 'balance', or it it just an unfortunate 2-sided metaphor?

the process has underlined the validity of the longstanding Eurosceptic claim that the EU, as Douglas Hurd once put it, had inveigled its way into the nooks and crannies of national life. And like an invasive creeper, its removal is causing damage. In both Northern Ireland and Scotland, Brexit is undermining devolution settlements

More fears: 

One result has been the absolute primacy of politics over other considerations [assumed to be bad?] . Boris Johnson’s government seems committed not only to get Brexit done, but to do so in a way consistent with the UK “taking back control” of its money, laws and borders....Consequently, even should a trade deal be agreed with the EU, it will be a relatively “thin” one 

Better 'balance', or maybe the usual Boris-bashing, or even a struggle for a suitable ideological line with this, after pointing out the conspicuous lack of action to 'level up':

Four years of promises have, to date, led to little in the way of meaningful action. Now Brexit at last is “done”, it is time for the government to deliver

But my favourite bit of history rewriting is this

the Brexiters were wrong to claim that leaving would be easy. Of course, the difficulties sprang partly from failures of political leadership and a parliament too divided to make up its own mind. Yet the National Audit Office claimed that by March 2020 there were roughly 27,500 civil servants working on Brexit. That even the British civil service, long feted as perhaps the most effective administration inside the EU, should have struggled with the task is telling.

Chlorinated chicken and dodgy 5G unless we extend the transition

New petite bourgeois concerns today in the Observer. Not very original, I fear:

The Observer view: as Britain flounders, Europe charts its recovery

 First the familiar weave:

If the struggle against the pandemic resembles a war, as Boris Johnson believes, then it’s pretty clear who is losing...Late into lockdown, late on PPE, late on testing, test and trace, late on halting the avoidable care homes catastrophe and late on the reopening of schools, Johnson’s government now lags behind in launching an economic stimulus package...The comparative slowness of Britain’s recovery stems from this continuing inability to safely reboot key sectors such as services – hospitality, shops, restaurants and pubs.

Fair enough, but a bit hind in its sight, and maybe a bit contradictory -- if he was late in shutting schools, maybe that provided a few days/weeks extra schooling which is what is being demanded now in the clamour to repoen schools? Same goes for services, of course -- keeping them open was bad but keeping them closed now is as well. Will the net time remaining open be greater or smaller when it is all over than the Obs would like?

Then into it properly:

 It should be plain to even the meanest ministerial intelligence that Britain is in the process of swapping a health emergency for an economic and social emergency. This nightmare is underscored daily by pre-emptive and, in some cases, opportunistic job cuts by companies ranging from Rolls-Royce and Centrica to British Airways and other carmakers. Tourism’s revival has been needlessly handicapped by Priti Patel’s mishandled border quarantine.

 As for the economic stimulus package, what does the Observer have in mind?

While the prime minister was focused on reopening zoos, Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, was implementing a €130bn (£116bn) domestic stimulus package to invest in 50 growth-promoting projects.  ...EU countries together will soon benefit from €500bn in non-repayable grants 

This seems a bit careless with gross and net figures again --of the 500bn euros in grants, how much would the UK have contributed anyway if we had continued membership in an extended transition? What would have been the UK net share? Would it exceed the alleged £100bn the Bank of England is making available?

The link to the Merkel story points to an article by the Blessed Larry, who does not normally get such an accolade. He admires the German package as 'well-crafted' and sees it as a final abandonment of austerity by one of its main advocates. It is not clear whether it was this that required the German High Court to overturn an ECJ regulation first (the actual story suggests the opposite, although there is more criticism of the package too). Elliott concludes:

All crises represent an opportunity as well as a threat. The opportunity here was for the government to use its financial leverage to change corporate behaviour for the better. That opportunity has been blown.

The Obs editorial comes to rather different conclusions:

unable to take advantage of these sensible, collective measures. Dogmatic, intransigent and reckless to the last, Johnson’s government is still insisting instead that the Brexit transition period, without which Britain might have faced food shortages at the height of the pandemic [strawberries,no doubt], will end on 31 December.  

It is worth noting that there has been an excellent crop of tasty English strawberries this year, but the main supplier for Wimbledon is supplying a niche jam-maker instead. All down to the transition period!

Back to the main story, it will all mean we lose face:

the Americans are watching this play out, ready to exploit British neediness to impose their objectionable terms for a bilateral free trade agreement. And as for a fair deal with China after Huawei, go whistle.

If only we were Great Britain again, not obligated to Johnny Foreigner. 

It is finally personal, of course:

Johnson knows all this, but does not seem to care. On the pandemic, on economic recovery, on Brexit, he blunders blindly on, blagging and bragging, trashing the country as he goes. This is not taking back control. This is a prime minister who has lost control.

Government spending -- post-Brexit splurge?

The Graun prints a statement from M Gove that he will:

reimburse Northern Irish businesses if they are hit by tariffs due to a collapse in Brexit talks, Michael Gove has said...If there is no deal a unique arrangement for Northern Ireland kicks in, with EU tariffs payable on goods circulating within the region but rebates on all goods that do not cross into the Republic of Ireland....Business leaders described the move as “significant” but expressed concern about the lack of detail.

 There might be problems though:

the EU state-aid rules would make the scheme problematic for big companies...Importers of cars, for example, would face a 10% additional levy on purchases from Nissan in Great Britain without any knowledge of when they could get a rebate.

Existing rules [NB] in the European State Fund would limit reimbursement to 200k euros over three years. Thank God we are leaving then?

There are sceptics, of course:

Victor Chestnutt, [crazy name. crazy guy] the deputy president of the Ulster Farmers’ Union, said planning for January was “like walking out into the mist, into the fog”....The committee chairman, [NI Affairs] Simon Hoare, said the apparent “open skies” thinking was risky. “Six months out, [it] seems to be playing with fire,” said the Conservative MP for North Dorset....He added that trying to get firm information out of Gove and the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, made him feel like “Alice through the looking glass [trying to divine] what words mean”.

 
Politicians aren't used to that, of course. As usual, everything has to be cut, dried and in unambiguous legislation [some chance] before it will satisfy doubters.

Meanwhile, floods of cheap money and massive borrowing after covid really do seem to have changed the whole economic position -- and made a no deal cliff edge/dark pit/car crash less catastrophic?

You vill be punished!

Rather an interesting twist to the Graun's report of the latest hiccup:

Dispute mechanism is key sticking point in Brexit talks, says Von der Leyen

Commission president draws attention to less well-known area where two sides are at odds

This is the odd bit that follows, though:

Ursula von der Leyen has highlighted the UK’s rejection of an all-encompassing punishment mechanism [my emphasis] to keep it true to any Brexit deal with the EU as the emerging threat to an agreement,

The EU wants a blockbuster deal [as ever] with a cross-cutting dispute mechanism covering everything from trade to transport and judicial cooperation to fisheries. A clear breach of the deal could allow either side to retaliate by suspending a part of the relationship...Downing Street has opposed the governance proposal, insisting there should be a series of separate sectoral agreements [as ever].

This is the usual clash beteen continental bureaucracy and UK pragmatism/opportunism. 

Pimmel winken with this:

Therefore, both national and European contingency planning would now have to start in order to be prepared for a no deal 2.0.”

And hints at the actual bargaining stakes:

“We put forward a proposal for the negotiating table, as we call them, on security and defence [and] foreign policy issues at large,” he [de Almeida, EU ambassador to the UK] said. “The UK has chosen not to open that table of discussion.”

Von der Leyen hinted, however, at an EU compromise on fisheries by merely seeking “guarantees and predictability” for European fleet rather than the status quo.

It's not just the BBC that offers repeats...

It's just like the policy of screening old Eastenders episodes, offering us 'another chance to see' something quite forgettable. Further to the blog about ideology endlessly repeating itself, an old anxiety. beloved of Project Fear, is given new legs (but not very good ones) in the Graun. It is 'news' because a different Parliamentary group and a new Macron spokesperson have expressed the same fears all over again and at the same time (which probably makes it a new item of international news too)

Failure of Brexit talks could lead to terrorism intelligence delays, say Lords

Real-time access to EU police databases has not yet been agreed in the negotiations

 It's practically the same story as reported a few weeks ago (see blog 08/05 below)

The UK risks losing its real-time access to a watchlist of suspected terrorists if it does not strike a comprehensive Brexit deal on justice and security, peers have been told....Fears were also raised over the future of the European arrest warrant (EAW) system and the prospect of the UK becoming a haven for foreign criminals...“I hope we will agree that we want to avoid going back to the old system, because it did allow criminal havens; [with] those characters who lived on the Spanish Costa del Sol immune from any formal proceedings....“It rather sounds as though the legalistic approach that’s being taken to SIS II [the database] [in Brexit talks] means that we’re not going to have real-time access to data,” said Anderson, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation in the UK between 2011 and 2017....Lord Ricketts, a former diplomat and the chair of the committee, questioned the “coherence” of the UK’s Brexit approach. It was looking for a Canada-style agreement in trade but a specially close arrangement in security and justice

Entirely coincidentally:

an ally of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the MEP Nathalie Loiseau, warned that a crash out from the EU without a deal would mean weaker ties on security.

The Government's response? An understandably rather weary one:

Brokenshire said he was optimistic the intensified programme of negotiations scheduled for July and August would deliver a result for both sides.
He was confident sense would prevail as there would be “a mutual loss of capability” in tackling crime and security if negotiations collapsed.
Deal or no deal, the UK “will continue to be a global leader of security and one of the safest countries in the world” with access to Interpol and bilateral intelligence channels, he said....

The only new bit is this:

Brokenshire rejected...concerns, pointing out that the UK had only joined SIS II in 2015 and Ireland was not a member of SIS II, suggesting it was possible to run counter-terror operations without access to the Schengen databases...“I remain optimistic as to what the negotiations in the coming weeks may bring because of, I think, that sense of shared endeavour,” Brokenshire said, adding that the published approach of the UK supported the “national interest and equally supports those broader interests for the EU security too”.

Mood changes, even in teh Gurdina?

The Gurdina:

In a boost for the prime minister’s plans to secure a deal by the end of the summer, the EU leaders agreed to strive to find early common ground on trade and security to avoid unnecessary economic chaos next year.

However, there were immediate signs of tensions on the horizon [from the President of the EU Council -- me neither]

In the meeting, they ['EU officials'] also “underlined their intention to work hard to deliver a relationship that would work in the interests of the citizens of the union and of the United Kingdom”, an indication that both were still aiming for a comprehensive and ambitious deal.

Johnson said the UK would continue to insist there was no role for the European court of justice, underlining assessments on both sides that finding a mutually agreeable international arbitration system remains one of the most difficult issues to resolve.

The Times [subscription] also reports that:

Brussels is preparing to back down over a Brexit fishing deal and acknowledge for the first time that European fleets do not have an automatic right to fish in British waters...In a concession to help to unlock negotiations, Michel Barnier is understood to accept that the UK will have to be treated as an independent coastal state and have annual negotiations with the bloc over fishing quotas from next year.

Those of us who can really see what is going on, and what people are saying 'in effect', like all journos at the Graun and the BBC, might see this as indicating some actual progress -- damn!

Common Flaws in Questionnaire Design 101 -- the leading question

Marvellous examples of leading questions in the polls excitedly reported by the GRaun. The survey they cite describes a number of reactions to the Covid crisis,including:

nearly 9 in 10 people (86%) now believing national government has a ‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of responsibility for ensuring people generally stay healthy, significantly up from 61% in 2018....over three-quarters (77%) of British people are concerned about the impact of social distancing on the health and wellbeing of the nation, a figure that rises to 83% among over 65s....two fifths (41%) of people having experienced a negative or significantly negative impact on their income.

But for some reason, el Grud emphasises this: 

Majority of Britons support Brexit transition extension, survey finds

Among the first sample, who were told that the transition period for leaving the EU would end on 31 December, 54% said the government should request an extension, while 40% said it should not.

Then an innocent  nudge provided by 'additional information':

The second sample received additional information on potential delays to the supply of medicines and medicinal products in the event of a no-deal Brexit, and among this sample, the proportion thinking the transition period should extend increased to 65%, with 31% saying it should not extend.

Also

The survey of 1,983 people in Britain found overwhelming public support (95%) for the UK to work closely with the EU in its response to the pandemic....Of those surveyed, almost all who voted remain in the EU referendum (99%) supported working closely with the EU to combat the pandemic, and more than nine in 10 (91%) of those who voted Leave also supported closer collaboration.

We are invited to assume that 'working closely' or 'collaboration'  means extending the transition, of course ,although the split between those who voted different ways suggests that quite different interpretations are likely -- unless all the Leavers have changed their minds altogether.

Just in case ambiguity lingers in the mind of the Graun reader (unlikely I know) , there is a concluding comment to steer us:

The Health Foundation, an independent charity, has previously said a no-deal exit from the EU could cause significant harm to the NHS and social care services....Dr Jennifer Dixon, chief executive of the Health Foundation, said: “As we emerge from the first wave [of infection], health and care services face major challenges in restarting and adapting services...“This winter a no-deal Brexit could exacerbate already acute shortages in the NHS and social care workforce and create new avoidable shortages of medicines and vital supplies.

In her own worst case, and unreported by the Grunni, Dixon also describes the impact of non-Brexit issues:

significant pressures from seasonal flu, supporting people recovering from COVID-19, tackling the large backlog of patients who didn’t receive care during lockdown, and potentially coping with another wave of infection from the coronavirus.

There is no call for analysis and fact-checking this time, evidently, and no insistence that the effects of the virus should be separated from the effects of Brexit, as was the case when Johnson was suspected of confusing the two impacts for his own purposes. All possibilities are mixed together in a worst case, a further example of Project Fear -- even at this late stage.

The poverty of ideology

The sheer cognitive exhaustion inevitably produced by ideology has been demonstrated in several ways. There is the prevalence of ideological 'mirroring', for example, where apparently separate themes are understood exclusively in terms of each other: the concept of the 'free market' is used to understand actual markets, and the (idealised) operations of actual markets strengthen the conviction in the theoretical concept.

I've been banging on on this blog with examples of 'moral panics' where various themes are articulated together by moral entrepreneurs in the press and elsewhere: Brexit gets woven into corona, minority oppression etc. so their qualities transfer. Thus the harms of corona symbolise the harms of Brexit, or overcoming thewishes of the minority who opposed Brexit somehow puts them in the same category, victims, as the minorities who experience discrimination.

Some writers and analysts are more skilled at this than others -- some marxist analysis of rival philosophies have patiently disentangled mirror structures lying half-hidden in arguments. Circularity or tautology are other names for this deferred justifcation, although that remains with just logical flaws.

Any road up, ideologies can never make progress as a result, it is argued. At its most abstract, they can never become sciences, trying to actually discover anything, but are doomed to 'apply' concepts by endlessly repeating variations of the same few privileged ones. Maybe these themes lie in the Unconscious, or the social habitus where they are beyond rational analysis. They get joined into current 'political' and social activities more explicitly in the endless task of making social distinctions, or class closure.

You may not have time nor inclination to follow this in analyses of liberalism, either Rousseau's or American liberalism, though Luckily we have weekly examples in the Observer cartoons which recycle the same old ideas again and again, even though cliff edges turn into dark holes, Brexit is sometimes represented as an ogre, sometimes just indicated off-stage, Britain is represented as Britannia, a lion or as Boris Johnson.