He said himself on the Today programme that he was surprised not to have been asked to make some changes, but wasn’t, therefore didn’t.

This retrospective character assassination attempt by the government is pathetic and smacks of desperation, quite frankly.

why on earth should civil servants be treated any better than the rest of us?

“There are about 70 Special Advisers (listed here) and about half a million civil servants.” Well blow me! Special Advisers don’t calculate tax returns or work in Benefits Offices. We’re hardly comparing like with like, are we? (I see chris got to that one first.)

“Civil servants are technically servants of the Crown. In most circumstances the executive powers of the Crown are exercised by Ministers, who are in turn answerable to Parliament or the National Assembly. The Civil Service therefore has no constitutional responsibility separate to their responsibility to the Government of the day.” Funny, there’s that word “most” again. And we seem to have a subtle change from “Civil servants” to “The Civil Service”.

You may be right about fallacy four: but I can’t say I’m happy about that.

Why is fallacy five a “common fallacy”? Who believes that ministers should not get advice from their party members, their wives, even old school friends, their mum, or mistresses (in the case of the old Tory party anyway)? Just invented a straw man to bring the numbers up, did you?

All in all, a thoroughly disingenous and distorted piece. Good work, Bernard! I see you’re learning.

Alistair Campbell’s role in the production of the dossiers seems a classic example in which significant and inappropriate pressure was put on civil servants for party political purposes. Civil servants are poorly placed to resist pressure from a special adviser who is closer to ministers than they are, and is in a position to make life very difficult for them.

You are right to point to the danger of politicians being unable to trust civil servants, but special advisers are rushing to the presses just as quickly, so I imagine they would find little better there.

Personally I think that what Meyer had to reveal about the buildup to war was of sufficient public interest that this outweighed the damage to future trust of civil servants. In any case, it may be beneficial for politicians to be aware that their actions are likely to be made public in the future.

Of that half million close on half are handing out benefits for DWP and other outward facing jobs, or managing those who are. The next biggest group are too junior to advise anybody about anything. Take away the vets in DEFRA, the procurement specialists in DoD, etc., including all the statisticians and researchers, and most of the rest are basically project managers.

At a generous estimate there may be five thousand civil servants who could conceivably influence ministerial opinion. but most of the time they don’t, unless specifically called on. Those who do are the staff of the ministerial private offices, and though they outnumbers the specials, it’s not by that much.

Special advisers enable civil servants to avoid inappropriate tasks (such as writing political speeches).

In your dreams. Do you seriously believe that every time a Senior Executive Officer has to drop everything and work all night to write a speech for the Minister of State for Knives and Forks to deliver to the Loose Chippings Junior Chamber of Commerce, they take care to leave out any reference to government policy? What’s the weather like on your planet?

The Civil Service therefore has no constitutional responsibility separate to their responsibility to the Government of the day.

You can think what you like about this, but it was new doctrine invented in the 1980s. It was regarded as pernicious by many at the time, and history has far from settled the question.

So, technically, are Ministers of State.

Sir Christopher Meyer was not a career diplomat, he was the politically appointed Ambassador to the USA, and a former press officer / spin doctor.

His book was “cleared” by the Cabinet Office.

Why should there be any difference whatsoever, between the Civil Service Code and the Ministerial Code ?

We expect the highest standards of conduct regarding memoirs, consultancies, directorships, shareholdings etc. from both ex-Ministers and ex-Civil Servants.

None of them should be allowed to sell their influence or contacts with Government departments in which they served, especially with regard to lucrative Government contracts, either directly or indirectly.

However, just because some old reminiscences might be politically embarassing to someone, is no reason to prevent the publication of memoirs by anyone, provided that current operational secrets are not revealed.

Ah the power of the semicolon. In this case you’ve used it to conflate two separate issues. On the role of special advisors, the criticism is that they have acquired the role and function that had hitherto belonged to civil servants, although personally I’d agree with you that their existence is no big deal.

But the politicization of the civil service has to do with something else. Traditionally in Britain, civil servants were supposed to be anonymous, non-partisan and therefore properly accountable to ministers and not parliament as you rightly say and following this used to remain in the job regardless of which party is in power. Surely there can be no doubt that this has broken down? It began, as far as I can recall, under Thatcher, where the PM’s press secretary became a public figure. Then (beginning under Major?) there was the strange helmet-haired head of Ofsted running about the country like a bloody evangelist or something. And Blair, as he has done so with so many other aspects of her governing style, has continued this essentially Thatcherite practice with great gusto. Witness the recent fiasco over the terrorism bill with the police not only ‘expressing an opinion’ as lugs Clarke would have it but actively involved in lobbying MPs for their votes.

On one level, it’s understandable and could be interpreted as a welcome check on the inherent conservatism (with a small ‘c’) of the bureaucracy who so often would be able to manipulate dim ministers who had no proper experience of their brief. But there’s a couple of problems with it: it undermines public trust in the impartiality of the bureaucracy and greatly expands the PM’s powers of patronage, which allows more opportunity for corruption as well as crap appointments.

Politicization of the civil service is not seen in the use of special advisors but rather in that it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish special advisors and civil servants as the Hutton Report showed. After the non-discovery of WMD does anyone seriously doubt that this, under Blair, has developed into something of a problem to put it mildly?

The type of person who is good at pumping flesh, rabble rousing, doing backroom deals, and so on, is typically crap at managing anything on the basis of anything except their own ego/survival.

Over the last 50 years or something we have seen a power grab by the political executive from the mandarinate and the management quality has taken a dive. Worse still is what has happened to the the motivation for management. Policy and policy implementation is now undertaken on the basis of what looks good in TV grabs rather than what works long term. The electorate are often called apathetic, but even if they aren’t, they are certainly too busy to analyse breadth and detail of policy so are open to abuse by their politicians. They need someone to go in to bat for them and politicians are simply too self-interested.

What I’d like to see more bodies, run at arm’s length from politicians, given tasks of managing the practical business of government. I’m talking about things like central banks. Everyone knows that interest rates would be managed disasterously by politicians but we assume that they are competent to micromanage (say) education or taxation. Ha Ha. Look around.

I’m quite happy for politicians to set the objectives and ground rules, and to be called in where things have gone awry but that’s about it. The current system is broken. We are heading further into an age where specialists are required everywhere and goverment is no different.