Today Douglas Carswell attempts to put the blame of our woes and troubles firmly onto the shoulders of the Civil Service.
I am certainly no fan of big government, exactly the opposite, however one should be aware that Civil Servants, and the departments and Quangos that they occupy are created and staffed by Acts of Parliament and the permissions of various Secretaries of State.
To blame them alone seems rather crass, although the underlying theme of the article is to ensure that their numbers and functions are reduced, so to that element there is common cause.
However, the biggest and by far the most important omission from the TalkCarswell article today is the ever present elephant in the room, the EU.
Douglas specifically asks:
The reality is that the British state is dysfunctional. It cannot administer its own Byzantine tax and benefits system fairly. Cannot control who settles here. Is unable or unwilling to convert £ tax into military equipment competently. Won’t contemplate the desperately overdue reforms needed to trade, agricultural and fishery policy. Is incapable of reducing, let alone reversing, the flow of red tape regulation that stifles enterprise.
Why is the British state so incompetent?
The simple answer is this: It is so incompetent, or appears to be incompetent, because it is also impotent. Successive British governments have allowed the unelected European Commission to impose over 120,000 Directives, Opinions and Decisions that British politicians then have to ask our civil service to manage and regulate.
We are effectively paying for 2 levels of civil & public servants, those who manage the work of our real government in Brussels both central and regional via the Committee of the Regions, and those who create the front of British decision making, and it is this mix of roles EU & British, diametrically opposed roles, that causes the huge incompetence that Carswell speaks of.
This is made very apparent, although not clear in its explanation to the British public when Caroline Spelman said the following, via a twitter post from Politics Home:
Spelman: 87 quangos in DEFRA – “quite possible to rationalise those without compromising front-line services“.
The reality of that statement is this. Why are we paying twice. When we are already obliged to take rulings and decisions from institutions in the EU such as the European Food Standards Agency, why is there any need for a British Food Standards Agency which is literally still only in place to give the impression to the British public that decisions are still made here.
The public is totally unaware that the FSA has to defer all its decision making to the EFSA, or that DEFRA as a whole cannot make its own decisions, it has to defer to the EU, especially in the areas of trade, agricultural and fishery policy. DEFRA and its 87 Quangos are simply an enforcement tool.
I wrote extensively about this on PJC Journal in October last year. Cameron, and the task of his government will be to dismantle the British element of government bureaucracy whilst retaining fully the EU government structure without letting the British public know. This will become even more apparent at the local and regional levels and is part of the smoke & mirrors policy of Cameron’s ‘Big Society’.
Carswell & Spelman are just 2 of the coalition politicians using ‘Nudge’ to ensure public opinion is channelled down the ‘right’ EU path. Trouble is, the sheeple believe them.
Related Reading:
Cameron, civil servants, coalition, EU, nudge
