Civil servants are this wretched government's "sin eaters" of the week

“Worst civil servants to be sacked” blares a Telegraph headline this morning. I could pretend to be shocked that they aren’t already, but I worked for the BBC, and I know that, when it comes to the public sector, employment laws designed to protect the innocent from bullying or discrimination have been ruthlessly exploited by the useless and the bone-idle to cling to their bloated salaries.

Whenever a government proves itself to be hopelessly incompetent, it immediately starts casting about for candidates to perform the role of “sin eater” – i.e. groups who will act as a scapegoat for its own shortcomings. This administration has, in traditional fashion, cast the Labour Party in this role. But that’s a time-limited option, so they’ve recently taken to blaming the Lib-Dems – which is justified, but a bit rich given that it was Cameron who cut a deal and signed agreements with the wretched tossers in the first place.

Tory right-wingers have started coming in for stick lately, especially as the local election results demonstrated that – as always – everything they’ve been saying has been proved to be utterly correct: the public disapproves of the EU, welfare spongers, high taxes, mass immigration, liberal law and order policies, the flatlining economy – and doesn’t give a stuff about House of Lords reform or whether marriage partners should both be allowed to possess a penis.

As continuing to attack the wing of your party whose views seem to coincide most closely with the electorate’s would be a stupid strategy – even for Francis Maude – they’ve decided to call for the Men from the Ministry and give them a damn good thrashing for not ironing their copy of the Times properly this morning. You see, the reason the coalition has proved so utterly spastic is that these bloody civil service oiks simply aren’t up to the job, so we’re jolly well going to start chucking them out on their pinstriped bottoms. Then, by jiminy, we’ll see a coalition A Team of psycho-nutter-bastards pushing through brilliant, popular policies like billy-oh in time to win the next election.

Good show!

Now, I bow to no critic in my belief that the civil service is grotesquely bloated, inordinately useless and ludicrously expensive. But if Whitehall's lumbering incompetence is all that’s stopping the Lib-Dems (one-sixth of the coalition’s MPs and a whopping 16% of the popular vote) from getting any more of their anti-business, anti-freedom, anti-choice, pro-EU bollocks foisted onto the British public, well, hell, let’s hear it for the Civil Service!

Outgoing Prime Ministerial adviser Steve Hilton has apparently suggested that Whitehall could function adequately with a 90% cut in staffing levels. Well, they could, Steve, if the government you’ve been advising stopped passing so much blitheringly stupid, irrelevant legislation and creating yet another raft of the sort of quangos you promised to torch. The policies outlined in the Queen’s Speech would have been perfect for a small Nordic country running a budget surplus – we’re heading for economic oblivion and you’re making it even harder for businesses by dicking around with paternity rights? Oi vey!

One Downing Street source is quoted as saying “At the moment, only about a third of a minister’s box is actually concerned with Coalition policy, the majority is unnecessary paperwork from civil servants and European matters.” Well, ministers, you have our permission to ignore the unnecessary paperwork, and are in no position to blame civil servants for “Euopean matters”. Europe creates 75% of our laws – and that’s the fault of politicians, not civil servants. You dragged us into the mess. Complaining about having to keep across EU legislation without publicly militating to escape the sinking ship is petulant and childish.

In my dealing with the Department of Education a few years back an army of civil servants and an even bigger army of consultants were running around dealing with some ridiculous initiative called “Every Child Is Like Really Fantastic” or somesuch – anyway, it was an idea which, like some children, should have been strangled at birth. Whose fault was that? Well – dur! – various Secretaries of State for Education, obviously.

Of course there are plenty of measures that would help to cut the size, expense and inefficiency of the civil service. Here are just a few of them:

Cut taxes to the bone - civil servants are responsible for spending too much of our money. That’s why there are so many of the buggers. If the state didn’t confiscate over half the wealth created by the private sector, we presumably wouldn’t need to employ so many highly-paid people to oversee the many wizzard schemes devised to waste it.

Remove Civil Service anonymity – when they screw up, name them (DMossEsq has already started the process on his website, here). How can an organisation squander billions on failed IT projects without a whole series of high-level sackings ensuing? How many people have been fired as a result of feeding the Home Secretary wrong information about the Abu Qatada appeal time limit? 

Stop civil servants being better-rewarded and better-protected than private sector employees – and stop funding pensions out of current revenues. You might ask them to choose two of the following options – gongs, high wages, generous pensions, or job security. Having all four seems very 18th Century.

The civil service is a left-liberal organisation which vigorously opposes right-wing policies. Nothing will improve until the political views of the mandarins begin to reflect those of the population as a whole. (Funny how the media-political elite is always keen to force institutions and businesses to reflect the race and gender balance of the British population – but never ever suggests they should reflect the political views of the electorate. Wonder why!)

But, first and foremost, this government needs to stop telling us they “get it”, face up to their own failings, and stop hiding behind “sin eaters” – no matter how deserving and convenient those scapegoats might be.