Ministers moved like lightning to appoint Sir Tim Barrow as successor to Sir Ivan Rogers as the UK’s permanent representative to the European Union. I have never known a senior diplomatic appointment whistle through so quickly.
This was a decisive way to deal with the furore triggered by Rogers’ decision to step down. But the episode has raised difficult issues about preserving the impartiality of the civil service as it grapples with the immense and politically charged challenge of Brexit.
Barrow is an excellent choice for the job. I have worked closely with him for 20 years. No 10 are right to describe him as a tough and seasoned diplomat. He is also a wily negotiator, who knows the ways of Brussels well from two postings to the EU. That he was chosen so quickly shows he has the confidence of all the senior ministers in the baroque setup that is Brexit Whitehall. This is currently the most politically exposed job in the civil service, and a changeover would always have attracted close scrutiny. But replacing one experienced professional with another should not have been such a drama. It became one because of the attacks on Rogers’ integrity by some of the leading Brexit campaigners, and the flash campaign to have him replaced by “one of us”.
For months, Rogers had been trying to do an already difficult job against a drip feed of denigration in the Brexit-supporting press. This came to a head before Christmas with the leaking of confidential advice he had sent to ministers reflecting views in Brussels that it could take 10 years to negotiate a new free trade agreement with the EU.
Bizarrely, some even accused Rogers of leaking his own advice. In my experience, the best way to work out where a leak has come from is to ask: “Whose interest does it serve?” This one certainly didn’t help Rogers. Much more likely, it was leaked in London with the motive of destabilising him, and he was promptly branded a gloomy pessimist with an agenda to keep Britain in the EU.
This campaign of denigration is of a piece with Michael Gove’s airy dismissal of experts before the referendum, and the tabloid campaign against judges as “enemies of the people”. The new rule seems to be: if someone is saying something inconvenient about the difficulties ahead, attack their integrity rather than deal with their argument.
Rogers’ treatment brings an important principle into sharp focus: amid the political rip-tides swirling around the Brexit issue, how can we maintain the impartiality of the civil service, and the space for civil servants to give fearless advice to ministers?
We have had an impartial civil service in this country for more than a century. It means that civil servants have the obligation to give their best advice to the elected government of the day and, once ministers have decided the policy, to implement it with loyalty and zeal. The political pressure to appoint a Brexit true believer shows how easy it would be to find ourselves on a slippery slope towards an American-style system, where officials are chosen for their political allegiance, and therefore change every time a government changes. It would be a huge loss if the politics of Brexit pushed us down that route.
To their credit, ministers saw the risk, and moved fast to avoid it. Now they need to reinforce the message that senior officials are there to give their best advice, even when it is unwelcome, and that ministers will defend them if they are attacked in the media the way Rogers was.
There is a long and honourable tradition of the British public service speaking truth to power. Throughout the second world war, Churchill’s senior military and diplomatic advisers, General Sir Alan Brooke and Sir Alec Cadogan, had furious disagreements with him in private when they thought he was on the wrong track; and Churchill listened to them. I remember the Foreign Office’s China experts explaining to Margaret Thatcher in 1982 that it was not going to be possible for Britain to hang on to Hong Kong Island when the lease on Kowloon expired. She was not an easy woman to persuade against her convictions, but the arguments were compelling and she accepted them.
I worked closely with the current prime minister on the difficult issue of Calais, when she was home secretary and I was ambassador in Paris. I know that she wants to be given the full picture, that she listens carefully to advice and takes it seriously. I know that she will have appointed Barrow for his competence, experience and resilience, not on the basis of whatever his Brexit views might be.
It’s much better that way, despite the over-excited views of some Brexiteers. Mrs May could do a lot worse than dispatch Barrow on one of the toughest missions in the civil service with the words of Queen Elizabeth I on appointing William Cecil as her secretary of state: “Without respect of any private will, you will give me the counsel you think best.”
