Mandarins humiliated at Foreign Affairs Committee

The shadow of Afghanistan darkened Westminster again this afternoon as the Foreign Affairs Committee gathered to discuss the farce of Operation Ark. Two of Whitehall’s top mandarins – Sir Philip Barton, the Foreign Office’s permanent secretary, and Nigel Casey, the PM’s special representative for Afghanistan – were hauled up before the panel of MPs. 

It came after whistleblowers Raphael Marshall and Josie Stewart released evidence which suggested that Boris Johnson personally authorised the evacuation of Pen Farthing’s Nowzad animal sanctuary. Given the recent revelations, Mr S was expecting fireworks and this afternoon didn’t disappoint.

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James Tidmarsh

The crisis gripping France’s Le Monde newspaper

For, after today’s appearance, perhaps the two mandarins should be applying for sanctuary with the Nowzad charity. For an hour-and-a-half, Barton and Casey were embarrassed in front of the increasingly-irate cross-party group. It was difficult, frankly, to choose a low point from the biggest ninety-minute humiliation since England lost to Iceland at the 2016 Euros. 

Proceedings got off to a bad start when the blustering Barton, under heavy questioning from Tory Alicia Kearns about who authorised the evacuation, admitted that he deleted his deleted emails as a matter of course throughout the crisis – shades of Hillary Clinton, perhaps. Sir Philip confessed he was receiving ‘hundreds’ of emails a day, more than 90 per cent of which were not relevant to him. Talk about proper record management

Following that ten-minute grilling, matters only deteriorated. An incredulous Liam Byrne asked Sir Philip – a civil service veteran of 36 years – ‘can you imagine a scenario where a civil servant would take this decision without some level of political input?’ A perplexed Tom Tugendhat meanwhile remarked that it was ‘a bit odd’ that no-one had asked either man in the past six months who was responsible for the evacuation. 

Barton and Casey, Whitehall’s answer to Laurel and Hardy, had clearly resolved to rely on a ‘Blame the MoD’ strategy as the absent Sir Stephen Lovegrove was frequently blamed for the poor decision making. According to the duo, the only time the national security adviser was consulted was about the Nowzad staff evacuation – rather than those judges, journalists and others fleeing Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defence’s tweet reporting the evacuation of Pen Farthing’s animals was taken as proof of the moment a decision was reached, rather than merely a confirmation.

As the session went on, tempers ran increasingly high as MPs simply stopped giving the two men the benefit of the doubt. Alicia Kearns virtually gasped in disbelief after Casey claiming that no civil servants raised concerns about Operation Ark: ‘Two people [Marshall and Stewart] have put their careers on their line. You’re telling me that nobody challenged within the system?’ A stony-faced Barton refused to confirm whether Stewart’s job would be safe in light of her whistleblowing activities.

An exasperated Chris Bryant meanwhile just gave up on quibbling with Casey about the testimony he had given before the committee on who authorised the evacuation. The Labour MP said: ‘I don’t buy any of it, I’m afraid. I really don’t’ as Sir Philip whined that: ‘We’ve done our best, chair.’ Bryant added: ‘It just feels we should employ a mole at the Foreign Office because whistleblowers have done all this work for us and Newsnight and not you.’ Both men were left ashen-faced at the end of the session, with one source in the room remarking to Mr S: ‘To call them stony-faced would be an insult to stones.’

Norman Tebbit once joked that: ‘The job of the Ministry of Agriculture is to look after farmers. The job of the Foreign Office is to look after foreigners.’ Judging from today’s performance, they can’t even do that right any more.