In recent weeks, a former head of the civil service has been quoted almost incessantly in the pages of the British press. Lord Kerslake today warned the government over its supposed plans for Whitehall reform. Last week, he criticised the ‘serious and extraordinary’ leak of personal New Year’s Honours list data. Before that, the same Lord Kerslake called on the government to end the Brexit no-deal uncertainty by looking at the possibility of a second referendum.
Readers might be forgiven for treating the pronouncements of a former head of the civil service as somehow above politics. After all, the civil service code calls on Whitehall mandarins to adhere to strict rules of impartiality. It is not, one might reasonably think, within a public official’s brief to openly extol a political point of view, even if the mandarin in question has since departed that particular role.
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