Quentin Letts: What BBC didn't tell you about Bob Kerslake
Yesterday morning’s BBC headlines brought the apparently shattering news that a certain Lord Kerslake had resigned as chairman of King’s College hospital in South London.
Such was the gravity with which these tidings were imparted, it was surprising they were not accompanied by the tolling of a muffled bell and calls for a two-minute silence.
Flags to half mast! Cover your mirrors with black crepe!
We were told that this Kerslake was a former head of the Civil Service and therefore not only important but also impartial. Yes. That, above all else, was the message. Here was a rigorously non-biased elder of our public life, calling it the way he reluctantly saw it.
We were told that this Kerslake was a former head of the Civil Service and therefore not only important but also impartial. Yes. That, above all else, was the message
And he thought the Tories’ handling of the NHS was rotten. If such an objective figure — a man above suspicion of taint from low politics, we kept being as good as told — could decide that Government spending on the health service was unacceptably low, well, it must be true. Must it not?
I caught Radio 4’s early-morning gloop about Kerslake while piloting my little Renault along some skiddy lanes in snow-ridden Herefordshire. It was a good thing nothing was coming in the other direction.
He was commissioned by the Shadow Chancellor, Marxist John McDonnell, to prepare a series of ‘implementation manuals’ for Jeremy Corbyn and Co as they (allegedly) prepare for Government
This projection of Bob Kerslake as some dispassionate Merlin made me laugh so much that the car started to wobble and near the bottom of Much Marcle ridge I nearly lost control of the back end.
There are two things worth knowing about the Rt Hon Baron Kerslake of Endcliffe. The first is that, although officially a non-aligned crossbench peer, he is currently working for the Labour Party. Let me re-type that in case, after hearing all those BBC’s reports about his political neutrality, you think I must be wrong. Kerslake is currently working for the Labour Party.
He was commissioned by the Shadow Chancellor, Marxist John McDonnell, to prepare a series of ‘implementation manuals’ for Jeremy Corbyn and Co as they (allegedly) prepare for Government. Mr McDonnell explained at the party’s conference that Kerslake would train Labour staff to face legislative challenges.
Colossus
Labour yesterday tried to say that he would be doing the work as ‘an independent’. From the parliamentary register of peers’ paid interests, it would appear he is doing it for no money. You rarely do that in politics unless you support the party involved.
The second thing to know about the 62-year-old Kerslake is that he is a total clunker. In three decades of covering Westminster’s select committees, I have seen officialdom put up a few no-hopers but Bob K was one of the worst. For us sketchwriters he was a collector’s item. He was so ineloquent, so foggy. When he gave evidence to MPs who scrutinised the Civil Service, they would peer at him in disbelief.
He was commissioned by the Shadow Chancellor, Marxist John McDonnell (pictured), to prepare a series of ‘implementation manuals’ for Jeremy Corbyn and Co as they (allegedly) prepare for Government
Could this meandering, wet, beardily indistinct plonker really be the head of our Civil Service? He earned the nickname ‘Bumbling Bob’. Mumbling, bumbling, bungler Bob Kerslake.
If Whitehall’s best was that bad, what were the lower ranks like? Yet the BBC was yesterday elevating this same Bob Kerslake to the status of a political colossus.
He was made head of the Civil Service in 2012 after a low-profile career. From the West Country, he had read maths at the University of Warwick and qualified as an accountant. And yet the circumstances of his departure as chairman of King’s suggests that financial management at the hospital was not everything it should have been.
What was not reported by the BBC yesterday morning was that Lord Kerslake jumped from his role at the hospital after being told that he could soon be fired. The NHS yesterday would only say that the financial performance at King’s was ‘unacceptable and continues to deteriorate’.
How did such a low-wattage specimen become head of the Civil Service? Well, it was an internal appointment and I understand just two candidates were in the reckoning.
Puppet
In best Yes Minister fashion, the Sir Humphreys wanted the job to go to someone they could control or ignore. And so they ensured Sir Bob (as he then was) was up against an even more useless candidate: the Home Office’s infamously weak Dame Helen Ghosh (who moved on to cause chaos as head of the National Trust).
Once Kerslake was in place, he was treated by Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood (aka ‘Sir Cover-Up’) pretty much as a puppet. The two men sometimes used to ride into work in the same taxi.
Few people in Whitehall were in any doubt which of them really ran the Civil Service — and it was not Bob Kerslake.
The more one looks at the King’s story and its prominence in yesterday’s broadcast news, the more odd it becomes. But perhaps other agendas were in play here. For Lord Kerslake is but one of several former senior civil servants who have had their snouts very much disjointed by recent political developments.
Brexit, and the disappearance of the Blairites, has sent many of them loopy. Take former Treasury permanent secretary Lord (Nicholas) McPherson, who was at or near the top of our national counting house for many years under many Chancellors. Since last year’s EU referendum, his Twitter feed has gone tonto, with almost daily posts about how the country is doomed.
nd so they ensured Sir Bob (as he then was) was up against an even more useless candidate: the Home Office’s infamously weak Dame Helen Ghosh (who moved on to cause chaos as head of the National Trust)
This is not exactly party-political, in that it does not side openly with Labour over the Tories. The partisanship, rather, is towards the old regime, the status quo ante — i.e. the world of Centre-Left officialdom as it was before the scurvy electorate voted for us to leave Whitehall’s beloved EU.
Also in the House of Lords we find Lord (David) Hannay and Lord (John) Kerr, two former princelings of the Foreign Office who now lead resistance to Brexit in the Upper House. Barely a debate on the EU passes without one or both of these drawling diplomatists pronouncing dolefully on our country’s prospects.
If they can sling in a rude word about Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, all the better. How they love to do us all down. British patriotism means little to them if they and their caste — who so enthusiastically ran ‘Project Fear’ — are no longer running Britain.
In this same category of pooh-bahs we can place Lord (Gus) O’Donnell, a former Cabinet Secretary who has become an unofficial outrider for the Opposition, moaning and mewling his disapproval of various Government policies.
Or how about Sir Simon Fraser? A former head of the Foreign Office and one-time bag carrier to Peter Mandelson, he loves to belittle the May Government’s chances of reaching agreement on Europe.
Ditto Lord (Peter) Ricketts, another ex-Whitehall smoothie, who after Mrs May’s disagrements with Ulster Unionists last week, purred patronisingly on Radio 4 that ‘we’re used to Prime Ministers going to Brussels and having a row with the EU, but to have a row on your own side is inconvenient’. How withering! How clever!
Bluff
It was such an amusing put-down that Jeremy Corbyn reproduced it in the Commons. But it suffered the inconvenience of being shown to be wrong, as Theresa May was actually strengthened after the DUP’s intervention in the Brexit negotiations.
There are plenty more of these dry, droll doubters, these former magnificoes of impartiality, now happy to cast sneery comment against Mrs May and her ministers, both on Brexit and beyond.
In their London clubs, at their think-tank lunches, in the House of Lords and in their social media echo-chambers, they are clapped on the back and congratulated on their ‘bravery’.
No doubt that happened to bumbling Bob Kerslake yesterday. But the outside world just looks and them and thinks, like Mandy Rice-Davies at the Profumo trial: ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they?’
They used to run our country and they said it would all go horribly wrong if their order was overturned.
Overturned it duly was — and the economy is still growing, just as the sun is still rising.
Their bluff has been called. Their game is up. If only the BBC would wake up to this.