There was total silence in committee room 15 for several minutes as everyone waited for the clock to tick round to 10am. Lord Geidt was totally at ease. In his element. Happy to say nothing for as long as was required. Longer even. You don’t get to have a long career in military intelligence and working for the Queen by saying any more than is strictly necessarily. And now his career highlight as the independent adviser on ministers’ interests. The ultimate establishment stooge. The man who passes for Boris Johnson’s moral guardian. Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.
Eventually, William Wragg, the baby-faced assassin better known as the chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, got proceedings under way. Could Geidt give his full name for the record? “I’m Christopher Geidt,” he said. And that was just about the last straight answer we got over the next hour and a half. Geidt is the ultimate Sir Humphrey. A man who has never knowingly uttered a sentence that could not be misconstrued.
After that we soon got lost in the weeds. His job was a very important one. But there again, in some ways not. After all, his job was just to advise. And then only in a very half-hearted manner. With the prime minister’s approval. For now he was really focusing on building trust with the Convict. As part of his rehab? And the best way to establish trust was to do what he wanted. Trust for Dummies.
It was beginning to sound as if Geidt had never read the “independent” part of the job description. The only real signs of independence we saw were from his psyche, which was trying to escape from him by referring to himself in the third person. But he was adamant that he was taking baby steps to independence. He did now have the power to initiate investigations without the prime minister boycotting them.
Right, said Labour’s Karin Smyth. Perhaps his lordship would care to say how his independence had worked in failing to start an investigation into how the attorney general’s legal advice on the Northern Ireland protocol had been leaked. Was it down to the Convict or Suella Braverman? Ah, Geidt smiled, rubbing his hands purposefully and rearranging his pen, that was a rhetorical question. One that was well above his pay grade. Besides, he couldn’t possibly have initiated an independent investigation because the prime minister hadn’t asked him to.
The SNP’s Ronnie Cowan tried to unpick this. Let’s get this straight. You try not to give advice to the prime minister on his obligations under the ministerial code. Geidt gently nodded his head. The closest he gets to an enthusiastic sign of approval. That was exactly it. Because if he gave advice and the Convict declined to follow it then no one would have any confidence in his independence. So far better to maintain an illusion of authority. Maintaining the magic by doing nothing.
Then we got down to details. Did Geidt think that breaking the law and receiving a fixed-penalty notice might be a clear breach of the ministerial code? Er, yes, no, possibly, maybe. It was rather down to Boris to decide. If he thought it was a breach of the code, then it was. And if he didn’t, then it wasn’t. Was that clear enough? And moving on to the new foreword to the code, that was entirely Johnson’s work. Which was as it should be. Because it was the prime minister’s job to undermine everything that the independent adviser tried to keep in the main body of the text.
By now, almost everyone was looking a bit lost. Understandably confused. Geidt relaxed, his work almost done. But the committee stuck at it. The Baby-Faced Assassin asked if Geidt thought it was a coincidence he had been given some more powers since Partygate. Geidt demurred. He couldn’t bring himself to say Partygate, instead talking of “the circumstances of events in Downing Street”. And yes, he wouldn’t hesitate not to use his new powers. To him it is still a mystery why there has been such interest in his job since the Convict has been in office. It was almost as if he was auditioning for a job in standup.
Geidt pressed on. A masterpiece of nihilism. The last word in futility. Existential despair reconfigured as rapture. There was a small limit on the capacity of an independent adviser to be independent. How small was small? That was the wrong question. The right one was how large was small.
Think about it. If he did his job properly he would have to resign. Just as Alex Alan had before him. That was the danger of having too many principles. So Geidt had decided it was best to dispense with any preconceptions. Borisworld was a vacuum of moral relativism. A place where anything was possible and everything forgivable. Where the way to survive was to not question anything.
If Boris chose not to sack either himself or ministers for serious breaches then it was up to him. “I’m not here to tell government what to do,” he said. Except he was. That’s precisely what every member of the committee and the rest of the country expected him to do. But Geidt knew an easy gig when he spotted one. The civil service ancien régime of least resistance. Just say nothing to anyone and then no one will know that you’re not doing your job.
Labour’s John McDonnell tried to draw Geidt on reports that he had thought about resigning once. “There was no single direction,” he mumbled enigmatically. “But I’m glad my frustrations were addressed.” And then forgotten about. He’d had a momentary glimpse of self-worth and then realised he wasn’t the kind of person to be principled. Far too much like hard work. No one became the Convict’s ethics adviser by having ethics.
“Your role is really just a tin of whitewash,” McDonnell cruelly observed.
“Thank you,” said Geidt. At first, I thought he was being sarcastic. Then I realised he was being entirely genuine. For there is no higher praise for the Nothing Man, the Wasteman, than to be accused of covering up the establishment’s shit. Here was confirmation he was doing his job to the best of his ability.
