Civil servants easily outwit politicians

Leo McKinstry wrote an edifying article in the Daily Mail (November 16) under the heading:

‘You can’t run Britain with a civil service hell-bent on blocking policies – and plotting to get ministers sacked’.

Yet this has always been the culture in Westminster as dramatised by the TV Comedy Yes Minister!

The root of the problem is that ministers are transient figures, here today, gone tomorrow, with civil servants in post often for decades giving them an unelected advantage over temporary elected plants who by comparison are less knowledgeable, less experienced and outmanoeuvred easily.

When I was a civil servant meeting an MP in the Strangers Bar of the Houses of Parliament on official business with some serious drinking by some all party, a debate of Foreign Affairs was in progress in the Commons.

I noticed some members had copies of Newsweek, partly a political journal, to be replicated in speeches.

It was pub talk, no match for the civil service!

David Fleming, Downham Market, Norfolk