Finally, he’s thrown in the towel. Boris Johnson has accepted there is no escape, and he’s on the way out as prime minister. You can imagine the schadenfreude with which depressed civil servants have watched the events of the last few days unfold. Across the UK, we look on open-mouthed, contemplating the unprecedented situation before us of how to run the business of government without – in most cases – ministers.
One of the interesting things about the MPs who left Johnson’s cabinet is that they were previously held up by party stalwarts as proof of the “diversity” – despite how unrepresentative the government has been on almost every measure other than ethnic background.
This might seem like a weird moment to be harping on about diversity but it’s directly related to the accelerating car crash currently unfolding before our eyes. Jacob Rees-Mogg recently took aim at diversity training in Whitehall, claiming the proliferation of “absurd” and “fancy” diversity training courses was “wokery”, and ordered civil servants to do courses that “actually help people in their daily work”. But what the next Conservative leader would do well to realise is that increasing diversity, in both the cabinet and the civil service, is common sense, supported by evidence suggesting that more diverse groups make better decisions (and are better behaved, too).
Perhaps those lockdown parties at Downing Street, which made such a mockery of the sacrifices of ordinary people, would have raised more eyebrows at the time.
Of course, Rees-Mogg’s real intention behind eliminating diversity training has nothing to do with productivity. Weaponising diversity is simply another tactic to politicise the civil service and to push those who work in it into abandoning their legal duty to offer impartial, evidence-based advice about the impact of government policies on poor people, disabled people and young people – on anyone, in short, who doesn’t vote Tory.
We are yet to see what Johnson’s new summer cabinet will bring, but as previous post holders have shown us, tribal loyalty to a prime minister as the sole criterion for admittance to ministerial office is a recipe for bad policy and even worse behaviour. Regardless who takes the top spot as new leader, it’s likely that a forensic demographic analysis won’t be necessary to work out why a spot of diversity training might do them – and, by extension, everyone else – a bit of good.
This government’s war against the civil service may have been paused, for now. But hostilities are sure to be resumed with vigour once panic subsides. Civil servants’ first loyalties will always be to the public and to the rule of law. So may the culture wars continue, as so too will our resistance. The next Conservative leader better be ready for a fight.
The civil servant is a serving member of the UK civil service
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