From Don Adamson
This week’s homework: Starmer tells us that everything will be just too tickety boo for words so long as we all pretend that he can make Brexit work. The Brexit earthly paradise that Starmer promises but cannot deliver will be a Labour Party earthly paradise so of course it will be a vast improvement on the earthly paradise that Tories promise but cannot deliver. Does Starmer have Plan B for what happens when he finds that he cannot make Brexit work?
This week’s quote: “Slashing spending is not a plausible option … radical rethinking is required … tumultuous decade has weakened the British Civil Service… fiasco … calamity can strike … civil service is institutionally weakened and vulnerable … highest staff turnover in a decade … evaluated and shown to be unsuccessful … government works best when those involved trust each other … years of political crisis have driven them apart … years of chaos … much too pliant in the face of Johnson’s lawbreaking … a recipe for blunders … if ministers want a more professional civil service they must professionalise themselves first … civil service needs more independence from ministers … needs a new legal duty to uphold propriety and inform parliament about breaches of laws and ministerial codes … Rwanda scheme would not be a deterrent … external scrutiny would force up quality … and have side effect of revealing when ministers ignore sound advice … it is a terrible waste … End of the Johnson clown show? … the mood was less jolly … an entire appendix of awkwardness … he looks done for … his chances of hitting the heights again look slim … austerity has damaged front line policing with the especially dire effect on the way sexual offences are dealt with … a woman raped and left in a coma would be likely to be dealt with by a single trainee detective… Richy Scumbag is not as dishonest as Johnson … nor as economically illiterate as Thick Lizzie … such a low bar as to be meaningless … Johnson beat all his predecessors combined in the lying stakes…
