Three key messages from Sir Ivan Rogers’ resignation

04 Jan 2017, by Owen Tudor in International

The headlines yesterday and today focus on “muddled thinking” as the key phrase to stand out from the leaked resignation e-mail of the civil service’s top man in Brussels, Sir Ivan Rogers. But in fact, that’s only the third most important part of the story around the shock departure of the UK Permanent Representative (Ambassador) to the European Union.

Much more important are his revelation that, still, there is no plan, and secondly, the reaction of Brexiteers to his departure. These have ranged from the McCarthyite witch-hunt being promoted by Nigel Farage and other bullies, to the less offensive but – because it’s more likely to happen – more worrying argument that the UK will negotiate more successfully if its chief negotiator tells Ministers what they want to hear rather than what they need to know.

“I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power. “I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them. “I hope that you will continue to be interested in the views of others, even where you disagree with them, and in understanding why others act and think in the way that they do. “I hope that you will always provide the best advice and counsel you can to the politicians that our people have elected, and be proud of the essential role we play in the service of a great democracy.”

Sir Ivan has been part of the senior reaches of the British civil service (in the Treasury, No 10 and now the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) for over a decade. So it’s no surprise that the final part of his valedictory email to the staff at the UK’s embassy to the EU (known as UKREP – Brussels does like an acronym) contained what certainly used to be pretty much standard advice from the old hands to their successors. It does sound a bit Yes Minister, but senior civil servants regularly consider politicians to have ‘muddled thinking’ that needs to be straightened out by the career experts. When I learnt about constitutional process, it was commonly understood that civil servants were partly there to save politicians from themselves by reminding them of uncomfortable realities. Obviously politicians don’t like this (especially those newly empowered and emboldened by electoral victory), and suspect that they are being played by people with their own agenda (and sometimes that’s true), but it’s nevertheless a vital part of the informal system of checks and balances in the British constitution.

It is more worrying that people found these words remarkable than that it should have been in the email, unless there are still people naïve enough to think that politicians can sometimes be muddled or wrong!

That’s the second most worrying aspect of this affair – the reaction to it by those who support Brexit. Nigel Farage didn’t quite claim that he had the names of 205 Remainers in the FCO in his briefcase, as red-baiter George McCarthy said of communists in the US state department in 1950, but he came awfully close. Several politicians – including some who ought to know better – seem to be arguing that those people who may privately share the view expressed by 48% of the electorate last June should be rooted out of positions of influence. All witch-hunts are dangerous, but ones directed at such a large proportion of the population are especially worrying. But these views are relatively easy to rebut.

What is more likely, and therefore even more problematic, is the view being expressed by more powerful voices that Sir Ivan’s successor (and Shan Morgan’s successor as his Deputy, as she is already off to run the Welsh government’s civil service) should be selected on the basis not of competence alone, but on the basis of their political views. The independence of the civil service is one of its greatest strengths, and the experience of Special Advisers over the last couple of decades shows how (whilst they perform a useful function) perilous the spread of political appointments can be. Politicians decide, civil servants advise. That’s not to say they should not be committed to implementing political decisions (Rogers’ memo makes that clear), it’s about having people in key positions whose job it is to make sure the politicians making those decisions are fully informed.

As Sir Ivan’s email said, this involves speaking truth to those in power, and the danger of a system where the advisers are so committed that they ignore all the problems ahead is that those problems are real and could cause enormous problems. To take just one example, sail into the negotiations blissfully unaware that the rest of the EU is going to insist on certain red lines (just as the British government will have red lines) would be like sailing into a harbour unaware of the rocks under the water. You’re not likely to reach your intended destination.

“We do not yet know what the government will set as negotiating objectives for the UK’s relationship with the EU after exit.”

But the absolute killer in the email is, of course, the confirmation (some say it is a revelation – although it’s been revealed in various forms over the last few months, not least the Deloitte memo) that the British government still does not have a plan for what it wants out of Brexit or how it is going to get it. All of us involved in this work outside of the government often suffer from the nagging worry that there is a plan which is being kept from us. But if it’s been kept from the government’s chief negotiator in Brussels, then it’s pretty clear that it really does not yet exist. And we are, remember, less than 90 days away from the Prime Minister’s self-imposed deadline for the triggering of Article 50.

So, as well as a new UK Permanent Representative in Brussels (and a new Deputy), the Prime Minister needs a plan, and fast. The TUC has been calling for this since last summer, and we have also been calling for the government not to keep it secret, but share it with the UK electorate and the key stakeholders – unions and business, city mayors and devolved administrations – so that it represents a common consensus that we can present to the rest of the EU.

Time, as well as people, are running out.