London Playbook: The gift of freedom — Pull the
other one — I’m an ethics adviser, Geidt me outta here
BY EMILIO
CASALICCHIO
June 17,
2022 8:13 am
POLITICO
London Playbook
By EMILIO
CASALICCHIO
Good Friday
morning. This is Emilio Casalicchio. Eleni Courea will be back in the Playbook
hotseat on Monday morning.
WESTMINSTER
INSIDER: S06 E04 — A boozy dinner with David Davis MP: This week Jack Blanchard
sits down for dinner with former Brexit Secretary David Davis to discuss his
35-year career in politics. Over ribeye steak and too much Malbec in an
exclusive Westminster restaurant, Davis muses on the Brexit negotiations which
will prove his legacy, and his personal relations with David Cameron, Michel
Barnier, Theresa May and other key players of the recent past.
SCOOP:
Davis told Jack it could take a decade to solve the Irish border crisis created
by Britain’s departure from the EU and admitted both sides in the 2016
referendum campaign underestimated the impact of Brexit on the island of
Ireland. Write-up here.
DRIVING THE
DAY
THE GIFT OF
FREEDOM: Boris Johnson can put his feet up and light a cigar to kick off his
birthday weekend, safe in the knowledge he has no official ethics adviser to
ruin the festivities. The prime minister can be ambushed by cake and drink into
the night in Downing Street and no one can send him mild-mannered complaint
letters on government-headed paper that seethe with frustration between the
insipid lines of civil service discourse.
Proud dad:
Johnson will turn 58 on Sunday, which also happens to be Father’s Day, so he’ll
be getting double the greeting cards from the BoJo brood.
But but
but: As the PM contemplates edging closer toward his seventh decade, questions
are still swirling over how his former ethics chief Lord Christopher Geidt came
to storm out of government. The move — said to be because Johnson wanted to
extend protective import tariffs on a few steel products — doesn’t quite add
up. As far as Playbook can tell, both the trade department and the trade
remedies watchdog that oversees these things had no idea Geidt had been asked
about the issue, and no one can quite work out the explanation for consulting
him in the first place.
Pull the
other one: The suggestion Geidt quit because Johnson planned to breach World
Trade Organization rules seems somewhat far fetched. For starters, there have
been much worse things to resign over in the past 14 months, such as the whole
golden wallpaper thing, the whole being misled about the whole golden wallpaper
thing, all those lockdown parties in Downing Street, all those lies about all
those lockdown parties in Downing Street, and that time the prime minister got
a police fine but claimed it didn’t amount to a breach of the ministerial code
and then rewrote the code. #Governmentofmessybitches (h/t POLITICO’s Esther
Webber).
Tin foil
hats on: It seems much more plausible that Geidt used the steel tariffs issue
as an excuse to resign — or it was an excuse used to push him out of the job.
As one Downing Street figure notes to the FT: “I think this is a contrived
protest for resignation.” An official who worked with Geidt added to the Guardian:
“It may be a convenient hill to die on, or the straw that broke the camel’s
back, or perhaps both are true.”
Killer
moments and bullets: In a deep dive into the ethics-meets-trade mashup,
POLITICO’s Esther (with help from Graham Lanktree and your Playbook author)
writes that two former Cabinet Office officials suggested the conflict over
trade rules was not the “killer moment” but rather a convenient point at which
to throw in the towel after a series of uncomfortable exchanges between Johnson
and his official conscience. Catherine Haddon, senior fellow at the Institute
for Government think tank, said Geidt “was ready to walk and they gave him the
bullet.”
The thing
is: The trade remedies bullet was a pretty poor projectile. No one quite
understands for what reason Geidt would have to be consulted on a
government-wide decision to breach international law. Indeed, Playbook is told
the government didn’t consult the ethics adviser when then-International Trade
Secretary Liz Truss ignored the trade watchdog and extended the tariffs the
first time 12 months ago.
Indeed: One
former trade department official noted to the POLITICO team that a WTO panel
would need to rule the tariff extension was illegal before it could be deemed
so. “DIT and No. 10 seem to have got themselves into a bit of a mess on this,”
the person said.
FWIW:
Downing Street insists the PM would always seek the view of the ethics adviser
when there is a question over something that could relate to the code. Playbook
will let readers judge whether that sounds plausible.
The next
problem … is that the government has been more than willing to breach
international law on a regular basis. (See: Brexit.) “Geidt going is not about
breaking international law because we obviously don’t care about that,” one
government official told Playbook. “We’re fucking breaking international law
like it’s one of our five a day.”
I’m an
ethics adviser, Geidt me outta here: Alex Allan, the former ministerial
standards watchdog who quit after being ignored over his report about Priti
Patel bullying civil servants, told the BBC Newscast podcast the trigger for
Geidt was a “combination of issues” around the lockdown parties and the TRA
decision. Allan is one of the few people to have spoken to Geidt since he quit.
The damning
thing is: The whole steel tariffs thing means Geidt’s true motive (unless it
was, in fact, steel tariffs) has been all but lost, and he’s ended up doing
Johnson a favor in making the PM look like the savior of steel communities.
Penistone and Stocksbridge MP Miriam Cates told Playbook she was “delighted
that the prime minister is such a strong supporter of our British steel
industry,” while fellow red waller Jacob Young told his Insta followers he was
“proud to support a government that backs our steel industry.”
And of
course … Cabinet Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg (a Thatcherite who used to extol the
wonders of trading on WTO terms) also hailed the PM as a darling of the steel
sector on Newsnight. “Geidt’s problem is not many people will understand what’s
really happened,” one former top civil servant lamented. “Plus he’s a man of
honor with few comms skills up against someone utterly cunning and ruthless.”
THE DAMAGE
IS DONE: The long-term issue will be whatever Downing Street does with the
ethics adviser role, after making clear it could be headed for the guillotine.
No one who was been watching this administration would be surprised if the post
never got filled and the ethics regime was scrapped. In a statement last night,
Lord Jonathan Evans, chair of the committee on standards in public life, said
“removing this independent voice on standards issues at the heart of government
would risk further damage to public perceptions of standards.”
Substantive
risk: “The ministerial code is the only mechanism a civil servant can use to
raise a complaint of misconduct, bullying or sexual harassment against a
minister,” added Dave Penman, boss of the FDA union for top civil servants. “If
the prime minister does not intend to replace Lord Geidt, then he must
immediately put in place measures that ensure a civil servant can, with
confidence, raise a complaint about ministerial misconduct.”
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patients post-COVID 19” is happening on June 29 at 12:00 p.m. and will take a
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