Friday 21 February 2020

Downing Street is starting to look dysfunctional

The new immigration policy has met with a lot of flak. As far as I can see nobody is in favour of it. I think I'm right in saying this is the first post Brexit policy where the fine detail of how it will work in practice has been published. I genuinely believe as each new policy is rolled out on fishing, agriculture, European trade, customs and border controls, security and so on we will get the same reaction. What we had before was better.

The author of the immigration rules herself was in the headlines yesterday but for different reasons. Priti Patel was accused of 'bullying' staff in a 'toxic' Home Office. This is reported by The Times so perhaps a bit more than gossip.  Read it HERE (no£). A few extracts:

"Multiple sources inside the department have accused the home secretary of bullying, belittling officials in meetings, making unreasonable demands and creating an 'atmosphere of fear'."

"Matters are understood to have come to a head last week when a senior Home Office official collapsed after a fractious meeting with Ms Patel.

"The official had been working through the night attempting to reverse a High Court ruling barring the deportation of 25 foreign criminals to Jamaica. At a meeting the following morning he was confronted by the home secretary, who demanded to know why the department had failed to reverse the ruling. He fell ill later during another meeting and was taken to hospital, where he was found to have a sodium deficiency."

"A Home Office source said: 'Sir Philip and [she] have fundamental disagreements about the rule of law. He’s committed and she isn’t. She’s belittled him and caused consternation, and she frequently encourages behaviour outside the rule of law'."

Patel has a tremendous ego but seems none too bright to me as this video clip makes clear. She confuses terrorism with its opposite, counter-terrorism, 11 times in the same interview.  It's the sort of thing your Mrs Malaprop type grannie might say:
Amazing. This is the Home Secretary for heaven's sake. How long can she last?

On a similar topic I want to introduce a new Twitter account - RogueWhitehallStaff.  This was created this month (16th saw the first tweet) and at the time of writing has 27,000 followers!  Not bad, eh?  It may be a spoof but it appears to come from inside the cabinet office, written by civil servants working for Cummings.  I hope it is genuine and until it's proven to be otherwise I'll take is as the real thing. A few examples:
The BuzzFeed article they refer to is this one where Alex Wickham reveals the depth of the unhappiness at the heart of this truly awful government, one which places more value on the eurosceptic credentials of cabinet ministers than on basic competence:

"Cabinet ministers have warned that Downing Street’s current management style and decision-making processes are “unsustainable” and “untenable”, after it emerged that some special advisers have sought counselling due to the stress of their jobs, and others are planning their departures from government.

 "The scale of unhappiness across government with the Downing Street machine came to light as former special advisers called on senior civil servant Helen MacNamara to defend the workplace rights of ministerial aides.

 "BuzzFeed News understands that several special advisers have sought counselling and had conversations with MacNamara’s Cabinet Office’s ethics and propriety unit over their treatment at the hands of Number 10. Special advisers have taken to discussing their plans for their next jobs outside of government, with some even talking about walking out en masse."

Downing Street is beginning to resemble a powder keg and it won't be long before it blows.

Polling

I think the polls have started to see a change after December's election. The WhatUKthinks series of polls asking if in hindsight the decision to leave the EU was right or wrong has narrowed from 9% lead for wrong in November to a 1% lead on February 10th. It's a big change. Wrong is still ahead but not by much.

I think the reason for this must be the 'Get Brexit Done' mantra. A lot of people have been taken in by it and think nothing has changed much since the end of January, the sky didn't fall in and therefore everything is fine. The pro-Brexit press is pumping this line out and it's bound to have an influence.

The polls may well changeover completely in the next few months. We may see a majority believe that leaving the EU was the right decision. But it will be only  a temporary respite.

The bad news cannot be hidden forever.
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