Civil servants should me more than neutral - they should be servants of the people

As someone avidly interested in politics, feeling tension inside Government becomes ever stronger, as the ministers and secretaries rush to get all sorts of laws passed in haste, with little consultation as possible. One can tell that they hate civil servants. The sort of haste means that strong political manipulation is being carried out. Who needs an ant colony when you can open a national newspaper and sense by the very headline that Whitehall is a battlefield?

The Government announced that ministers will be able to give civil servants the sack and replace them with their own lackeys. I have watched enough episodes of The Thick of It that it would be disastrous to see the many Ollie Readers, the Special Advisers, being employed as part of the civil service. But that’s not what angers me most of all – I am particularly outraged that the Government is reduced to such low-level tactics, to such engineering of the system, in order that these ‘masterplans’, which so far have proved ineffective and, at times, detrimental, are passed. It shows that the Government is weak, the Goliath under attack not just by the peasants storming the Bastille that is the Cameron ministry but from its own associates – although, not strictly employees, as they are allied to the State, and not to the political parties, unlike the SPADs and the MPs.

I go back to the idea that civil servants are owned by the State, by the people who contribute. As much as I hate the reference to the ‘taxpayer’ (because, actually, once the Treasury’s got their hands on it, they can do as they wish), these people are paid by us, like all public sector workers. They should, like the NHS, work for the people, and cater for their needs. I know this sounds very utopian, but the civil servants should work to protect the people from the Government, as ambassadors. It is vital that the Government is restricted and is one of the foundations of democracy. The United States does this through the courts, through such processes as impeachment. But I believe that judges and panels are still too close to government, and the political motivations too apparent (as I fail to see how having an affair affects your decisions in Government). Civil servants provide a suitable distance.

I also believe in an institution on par with the ENA (École Nationale d’Administration) in France, that trains the brightest among all classes and creeds. I am fully aware of the flaws in the ENA, in that after sixty years, the idea of a school, picked on the basis of sole intelligence, as was proposed by de Gaulle, has been diluted, but that does not mean that this country should do the same. Intelligence should come first, no matter what – not family links, not affirmative action, just the ability to protect people’s interests by restraining government authority.

It angers me today that the Government is refusing to back down, against popular opposition to cuts, cuts and more cuts, driving the economy into deeper recession. And this is with the civil service trying to curtail governmental action. It only frightens me further to think what the government would do if the brownnosers were too busy brownnosing.