How Brexit politicised the Civil Service
Before becoming a lawyer, I was a civil servant: at the end of the 90s I worked as an EU official for over a decade. While I had admired the spirit of public service since I was little, in my country, Spain, the administration was — and still is — heavily politicised. The same was true in Brussels, where it was almost impossible to make a career at the EU institutions without the right political backing.
During my time at the EU, we looked up to the UK Civil Service as the “crème de la crème”. Most politicians only like to hear from those who agree with them, so at the EU we hesitated about warning our political masters that they had disregarded something important or got something wrong. But we were told that in the UK even young officials could make their views known to Ministers without the fear of any negative repercussions. UK civil service jobs were not given or taken away on political grounds and therefore officials were insulated from political games. It seemed like nirvana to all of us.
Neil Kinnock was sent to Brussels as Commissioner to try to reform the EU administration along the British model. Though he tried hard to get all officials to behave more like the Brits, he did not manage to make much progress. It was indeed a difficult task. But the narrative about the superiority of the British administration endured: UK officials were considered not just above average, but at the very top of the European game.
I then went to work at the Foreign Office in the Middle East department led by Mark Sedwill. As often happens, the reality did not quite live up to the image I had in my mind. The Foreign Office was impeccably smooth and well-organised, but it had a crippling inability to address new challenges. While the shambolic nature of the EU administration allowed room for good civil servant teams to run with innovative proposals, the UK’s stringent procedures killed any originality. Still, what stood out to me above anything else was the quality of the upper layer of the UK civil service: they were there not because of their political allegiance, but on the basis of meritocracy and impartiality; as a result, with very few exceptions, they had an unwavering commitment to both excellence and public service ethics.
Fast forward twenty years and the once unparalleled reputation of the UK administration is now in tatters. The reason? The way in which pro-Brexit ideology trumps anything else for the UK Conservative government, including the impartiality and meritocracy of the civil service
The first sign of the decline came when, just after David Cameron lost the Brexit referendum in 2016, the government made no attempt to bring back to the UK administration the EU officials of British nationality who had been until then working in Brussels. Doing so would have put the UK in a truly advantageous position to negotiate the Brexit deal — what could be better than having people on your team who have been working for the other side? But the very fact these people had worked in Brussels made them, in the Government’s view, off-limits and quasi-pariahs.
The second sign was when Theresa May forced the UK ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, to resign. He was a widely respected man who had loyally worked for politicians of all stripes. But Theresa May, an insecure Prime Minister, saw his impartiality as a personal affront, so he was side-lined — this is exactly what happens to impartial senior civil servants in countries like mine where the administration is heavily politicised.
The final blow took place last week, when the Head of the Civil Service, Sir Mark Sedwill, was forced to resign to make way for an ardent Brexiteer. He was replaced as National Security Adviser by David Frost. Frost was chosen for his loyalty to the Brexit cause as, unbelievably for a job with such crucial responsibilities, he has zero experience on security matters. Instead of being known for his competence and impartiality, as his predecessor was, Frost is known for being, in the words of Lord John Kerr for whom he worked for many years, “extremely diligent in doing what he is told”.
Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummins and Michael Gove often speak of the need to “reform” the civil service, but all they are doing is crudely and blatantly politicising it. The government could legitimately try to bring in more technical expertise, to make the administration more diverse, or to modernise it — but instead No 10 is indoctrinating the administration with its own political ideology. All around Europe we used to admire the UK Civil Service for its quality and impartiality, but the UK government has made that no longer possible. By politicising the administration, they have diminished the international standing of the country.
