Truss resumes her war on Whitehall

Shalom from Manchester, where Liz Truss has visited a synagogue. This being the Tory leadership race though, every visit is a chance for a good bit of self-promotion, with team Truss firing off a press release to mark the occasion. But amid pledges to pursue a free trade deal with Israel and give more support for the British Jewish community, Mr S was struck by Truss’s promise to ‘change woke civil service culture that strays into anti-Semitism’.

Such a claim, without any supporting evidence, has prompted bemusement and even anger from former and current civil servants. Sam Freedman, a former adviser in the Department for Education, called it a ‘bizarre comment’ tweeting: ‘I worked in the civil service for three years and have worked with numerous officials on various things since then and have never once experienced any anti-Semitism.’ A serving Whitehall official told Mr S it was a ‘bizarre dog-whistle’ and asked what message it sent to those who will presumably be expected to deliver Truss’s policies.

The Truss campaign is yet to offer any examples of ‘woke civil service culture that strays into anti-Semitism’. The candidate herself though has complained in the Jewish Chronicle of Foreign Office staff who did not share her views on ‘tackling anti-Semitism at the international level’. She told the paper ‘every organisation has its culture, but it’s not fixed, it can be changed… I’ve been very clear with our officials about the positions we take on Israel and that will continue if I become Prime Minister.’

First, she proposed cutting their pay, now Truss is criticising the culture of the civil service itself. Even with the change of premier, looks like there will be no cessation of hostilities in the government’s long-running war on Whitehall…