Former civil servants Sir Thomas Legg & Sir Christopher Kelly have had their go at MPs & their expenses. Now we have Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry which, so far, has seen a procession of serving or retired civil servants giving their side of the story.
Thus exposing, as Oliver Miles put it on Radio 4, ‘The apparent separation between the official machine & the PM & his close coterie of advisers.’
And Anthony King is working on a new book which will examine his observation that administrative disasters seem to come more frequently & on a bigger scale than ever used to be the case. I suspect, expect, that, if indeed this is true, the reason will be, in part, an even more painful but unpublicised series of separations between politician & professional advisers - not just Sir Humphreys, but specialists such as scientists, economists, statisticians & engineers – who, like those working in the public sector outside of Whitehall, felt that their professional knowledge, expertise & principles were being ignored or ridden rough shod over after 1997.
Thus exposing, as Oliver Miles put it on Radio 4, ‘The apparent separation between the official machine & the PM & his close coterie of advisers.’
And Anthony King is working on a new book which will examine his observation that administrative disasters seem to come more frequently & on a bigger scale than ever used to be the case. I suspect, expect, that, if indeed this is true, the reason will be, in part, an even more painful but unpublicised series of separations between politician & professional advisers - not just Sir Humphreys, but specialists such as scientists, economists, statisticians & engineers – who, like those working in the public sector outside of Whitehall, felt that their professional knowledge, expertise & principles were being ignored or ridden rough shod over after 1997.
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The human machinery of government
The human machinery of government
