It was a week when Boris Johnson, by defending a minister who wasn’t being compared to Ms Whiplash, ended up gumming up the civil service.
It was a week when Sir Kier Starmer’s refusal to whip his predecessor, along with plenty of froth from a leading Trade Unionist, ended up gumming up the Labour party.
It was a week when Sir Ed Davey’s press releases had about as much bite as my great gran’s oft-mislaid false teeth had and which ended up with her gumming her food.
And it was a week when the Doily Express was out-gumming the Torygraph in their paroxysms of purple prose over Nicola Sturgeon – who’d barred Glaswegians from Edinburgh (coincidentally).
Claiming the moral low ground
As Home Secretary, the right honourable Priti Patel is clearly a good person to have around. Plenty of gumption, respected by senior Tory MPs, knows how to resign – what’s not to like?
Err, apparently she shouts and swears at top civil servants.
One of which was Home Office boss Sir Philip Rutnam (KCB), after he’d raised concerns about her behaviour. Apparently nothing changed so he resigned.
Sir Alex Allan (also KCB), the private secretary to former PM’s John Major and Tony Blair, resigned last week when current PM Boris Johnson (who’d appointed him to oversee ministerial standards of behaviour) didn’t take action over his report.
Boris’s urging of Tory MPs to “form a square around the Prittster” was followed by news that Sir Alex had been blocked from interviewing Sir Philip.
So “the Prittster” has stayed and should perhaps now be known as the Pritt stick.
At least until Sir Philip’s claims for constructive dismissal and ‘protected disclosure’ (whistleblowing) get heard.
Standards, wot standards?
Ministerial conduct wasn’t the only trouble the old Etonian was having with standards in public life last week as stories of chaotic Covid contracts, parlous PPE procurement and artless administrator appointments all poured out.
In order to prosper, it seemed all one needed was to be a close associate, mate, friend of a friend or just meet a minor minister down at the pub.
In early November the London Reviewof Books’ essay on Cronyism and Clientelism was a compendium of Covidious crepitude.
‘The Conservative Woman’ (an online news and views source) called the government’s Covid-19 deals into question, asking how come a “confectionery wholesaler and an opaque private fund owned through a tax haven” were two of the three biggest beneficiaries of PPE contracts.
But matters didn’t stop at contracts as the Good Law Project made clear with cross party support for a judicial review over lack of transparency, as the details hadn’t been published as required by regulation 50 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.
High-paid ‘help’
Another lawsuit was filed last week over three appointments to senior posts in Covid-struck Britain without the usual public appointments interview process.
Baroness Mary Harding, wife of a Conservative MP and herself a Conservative peer, was given the job of sorting out NHS Test & Trace, then when that didn’t go to plan she was put in charge of the National Institute for Health Protection.
The hon Kate Bingham, wife of a treasury minister and cousin of Boris, was hired to sort out the Vaccine Taskforce and promptly ran up a PR bill of £670,000.
Mike Coupe, a former supermarket worker and colleague of Harding’s, has been given the job of director of NHS Test & Trace.
Perhaps unsurprisingly in Parliament last week, ‘cronyism’ cropped up frequently in the Commons debate on Covid-19 while in the Lords debate on PPE procurement a Conservative peer referred to ‘a tawdry chumocracy’.
It gets worse
In an innocuously titled article 10 days ago the BMJ (British Medical Journal) made the point that “When good science is suppressed by the medical-political complex, people die”, following up with “Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health”.
This hit the news in Scotland last week and in just one English online newsfeed – The London Economic.
But with the BBC muzzled by new management, not forgetting Boris’ threat of a license review, and with other mainstream media being a bit slow on the uptake it’s all pretty much top shelf material.
For now.
Singing the Blues
Sadly, the consequences are that Boris Johnson’s government has become a byword for disintegrity on an industrial but far from industrious scale.
“Don’t ye’ know there’s a panic (sorry, pandemic) on”? only works for a short time.
These matters have persisted for months, and aren’t being resolved by good government.
And while the PM sets himself a high standard in emulating the words and/or actions of Winston Churchill – one can’t help wondering whether that’s the warrior statesman of 1940 – 41 or just the self-absorbed incompetent of 1915 Gallipoli?
A lighter note
In everyday use, a Pritt Stick is a block of adhesive in a twistable casing that resembles a lipstick that’s easy to apply.
In government use, a Pritt stick is a twistable lipstick in an adhesive casing that resembles a block that’s hard to remove.
Apparently she won’t be, so you’ll have to be.
Resigned, that is.
