Jenni Russell: Victims of a culture of contempt (original) (raw)
What the Kelly affair has highlighted is a ferocious brutality at the heart of New Labour. Here is a government obsessed with maintaining the public's respect. Yet it has shown that it is not willing to respect those who hold a different viewpoint, or question its interpretation of how to govern. David Kelly is the most recent and tragic victim of Labour's culture of contempt, but the way he was treated is part of a pattern.
It is clear that Dr Kelly was a principled man, to whom the respect of those around him was critical. He was proud of the high regard in which he was held by his colleagues and by the journalists who turned to him as an expert. But within days of telling his bosses that he had talked to Andrew Gilligan, the whole basis of Dr Kelly's self-esteem had been systematically destroyed. His employers made it clear that they didn't value him - by breaking their word to him, abandoning him to face a media onslaught and making slighting references to him as a "middle-ranking official". Taking their cue from government briefings, reporters turned on him. At the select committee, he was sneered at by MPs. A man who had been confident about his worth suddenly found the world acting as if he was worthless. Dr Kelly had assumed that his record, his character and his dedication to his work would be taken into account in the way he was treated. He was wrong - because he was no longer being judged by a civil service code. He had got in the way of a New Labour machine that has spent the last six years crushing those who oppose it.
We are all familiar with the character assassinations of Mo Mowlam, Clare Short and Elizabeth Filkin once the government had decided to get rid of them, but the extent and depth of the government's undermining of opponents goes further. Its effect has been seriously to damage the effective functioning of our democracy.
In the Lords, peers appointed by Labour because of their record of independent thinking and adherence to liberal values have been shattered by the pressures imposed by the whips when they dare to vote against the government. They have been threatened with social isolation, told they are loathed by their colleagues and warned to keep their profiles low. They have been shocked and depressed by the experience. The Lords' effectiveness is reduced every time the tactics work.
The same mechanisms are used in an attempt to manipulate the conclusions of crucial Commons select committee reports. The committees are there to provide independent scrutiny. The flaw in the system is that the MPs who sit on them aren't free agents; those who have any ambitions will always be vulnerable to secret promises or warnings by the government if they choose to influence or subvert committees' work. So there are MPs who privately applaud critical reports, only to vote against them. They are later rewarded with posts as PPSs, or given seats in the Lords. Meanwhile, MPs who stand their ground have been briefed against, warned they'll never have a career or told they'll be deselected.
In the civil service, Labour's approach has been much more subtle, but perhaps even more destructive. When the government took power there was a huge reservoir of goodwill towards them from officials eager to participate in creating change. But in some key departments - though not all - civil servants describe the ministers who arrived as suspicious, arrogant and completely intolerant of dissent. Officials who thought it was their role to raise queries discovered that they had been marginalised, while ministers looked elsewhere for advice.
The consequences were potentially disastrous for New Labour. Civil servants with skills, experience and insight didn't have their exper tise harnessed because they felt treated with contempt. More seriously, in its refusal to listen, Labour made key managerial mistakes. For its first four or five years, it attempted to control far too much from the centre. It took that long for it to realise that in the health service, for example, the micro-managed blame culture was leading people to lie and cheat in order to meet targets. A dedicated and disillusioned senior manager says if ministers had only listened from the start, the government would not have lost critical years in which to prove to the electorate that it could deliver.
This government would argue that its behaviour has been no worse than its predecessor's. That may be true but the public mood is changing. If Tony Blair's administration is to regain respect, it has to rethink much more than its media management. The hostile bunker mentality it developed in opposition, and its belief that only the trusted, chosen few have a monopoly on judgment, wisdom and insight, has to go. If it really wants to change Britain, it has to mobilise the goodwill and talent of millions of people. It cannot do that while making it so clear that those of us who question it, whether as individuals, broadcasters, employees or voters, are of no account.
ยท Jenni Russell is a former BBC current affairs editor