How not to run a country

In the first interview since he delivered his report, Lord Butler tells Boris Johnson that Britain suffers from an overmighty executive bringing in ‘a huge number of extremely bad Bills’

If you, like me, had gone charging up the stairs of The Spectator last Tuesday afternoon, and if you had rounded the corner to see the noble profile of Lord Butler of Brockwell, silvery, craggy, radiating patience and integrity as he sat on the sofa, then it might suddenly have occurred to you to wonder — as I did — why this monument of discretion, who served as secretary of the Cabinet and head of the Home Civil Service under three prime ministers, from 1988 to 1998, and who is generally accounted the safest pair of hands in Whitehall, had come to this den of journalism and you might have asked yourself why, for the first time since he had delivered his famous report on the discrepancies between British intelligence, government rhetoric and the pitiful reality of Saddam’s weapons programmes, he had consented to an interview. Why talk now, Robin?

In a way that is both inspiring and exhausting, Lord Butler of Brockwell, 66, has all the manly virtues. He took a first in Greats. He has a rugby blue, and he does not bother to list either distinction in his Who’s Who entry because he also possesses the virtue of restraint. He has consecrated his career to the impartial service of government, Tory or Labour, and all that time he never offered a single public opinion about the way that government was carried on.

The glow-worm politicians came and went, with their ludicrous antics and slogans, and Butler was there to pick up the pieces. He buttled on and he buttled for Britain. He was there in the Cabinet long before Thatcher was slain, and he was still there, trusted and admired, after Blair came to power.