The Tory Politics of the Civil Service Cull

Friday's BBC Breakfast's had Jacob Rees-Mogg on to explain why the government plans to axe 91,000 civil servant jobs. In an arrogance that typifies his entitled ignorance, he batted away questions about workloads and existing delays in discharging services by suggesting "technology" could be brought in to ease the burden and allow for a clear out. To try and downplay its significance, Rees-Mogg suggested we would only be returning to the civil service staffing levels of 2016 and implying that the bureaucracy has got overweening, wasteful and burdensome since. What he failed to mention was how this low point resulted from the gutting of the civil service by five solid years of cuts. This programme, loudly backed by Boris Johnson, would return the state's capacity to a low point of historical weakness.

Why are the Tories keen to do this? Rees-Mogg said the highest calling of a politician is to reduce the taxpayers' burden by ensuring money is spent wisely and efficiently. This, as we know, is premised on a political fiction - the UK state isn't dependent on the tax returns Rees-Mogg's hedge fund does so much to dodge, but that's by-the-by. However, as rationales go this argument is a pretty thin one. It might have stood up in the Thatcher years, and even during the deficit panic the Tories cultivated after the stock market crash, but in 2022 when the government have let billions slide in fraud and, it turns out, helped bung "taxpayers' money" to the failing Tory press? It leaves their we're-careful-with-your-money shtick wide open to attack. This dawned on the Tories as the day wore on, and by lunch time we'd gone from "efficiency" to "saving money to tackle the cost of living crisis". If in doubt, pull on the divide-and-rule lever.

Like most things Tory, the consequences for themselves haven't been thought through. If we are to take their levelling up rhetoric seriously and not with a pinch of salt, then Rees-Mogg's plans don't match up with what Michael Gove and, for that matter, Johnson are supposed to be working on. Central to their rebalancing strategy is moving civil service jobs out of Whitehall and distributing them around the country. In a back-handed acknowledgement of Keynesian multipliers, these jobs would redirect wage and salary spend away from the capital, rejuvenate battered local economies, and provide graduate opportunities outside London and the big cities. Cutting 20% of the civil service workforce somewhat undermines this ambition. But then what does Rees-Mogg, the beneficiary of a lifetime of indolence, know about practicalities? And there are the political consequences too. One can't imagine there are too many Tory-voting civil servants left, but attacking such a huge workforce with its families and dependents isn't smart electoral politics when the ageing Tory base are shrinking and swaying, and the parliamentary party are in a restive mood.

How to go about explaining this self-destructive policy stance? Just because, from our perspective, this appears to be an unforced error doesn't mean Tories see it in the same way. For Rees-Mogg, there are two considerations for pushing this. It raises his own profile as an "effective" minister among the party rank-and-file. If he's able to deliver the cuts, and after all it's much easier to destroy than build something, his future chances of the party leadership or a guarantee of senior posts after Johnson has gone are greater. Second, there's the comfort zone of substitutionist activity. As Brexit has netted no tangible benefits while blighting exports and living standards, rather than have to deal with the mess he campaigned for his pivoting to mass sackings is easier and consistent with his world view. For his pains, or rather the pains of tens of thousands of people due to lose their livelihoods, he'll bask in Tory praise for "tackling waste" which reinforces the first consideration. And no doubt spun as a front in their dreadful war on woke nonsense, it might help cohere some of the more backward sections of their base - but it's sure to put many more off.

This, however, is not enough when it comes to getting to the bottom of Rees-Mogg's cuts obsession and it cannot be separated from a longer-term Tory project aimed at reducing, for want of a better phrase, the state's social capacities. The Tory/LibDem coalition carried through a "classical" programme of austerity by slicing services to the bone and further consolidating neoliberal governance, but since the outbreak of Covid the Tories have shifted gear to something else: the dampening down of demands on government and state to try and shrink the popular political imaginary. What does this mean?

The consequences of Corbynism and the pandemic shifted the boundaries of politics - Corbynism broke decisively with the penny-pinching market fundamentalism of the Dave/Osborne years, and the Tories were forced to adapt to it. Theresa May's one nation rhetoric didn't form in a vacuum. Johnson co-opted this when he ousted May and, again rhetorically, married it to his Get Brexit Done programme to win over those Labour-leaning leave voters who weren't keen on Corbyn, and on Labour's second referendum pledge even less. Thus levelling up was born in the context of raised expectations. Then the pandemic hit and, in what you might describe as a smash and grab, after defeating Labour they adopted Corbyn's pandemic plan. All of a sudden the state had underwritten the wages of millions of people and were keeping business on life support. Since that very moment, the Tories have worked not just to depoliticise their responsibility for the horrors of the crisis, but slam shut the Overton window opened by the post-referendum and pandemic moments.

The Tories went about this by reimposing conditionalities on social security as soon as they were able. Homelessness, which was solved at a stroke, was allowed to return. Furlough was pared back, and significant holes in business support persisted throughout the moments of acute crisis. They stubbornly resisted extending the scope of free school meals during school holidays, progressively eased Covid precautions according to their political, not clinical, timetable. Have not stumped up anywhere near the promised funds for regenerating the English regions, and done nothing to ease the cost of living crisis - apart from a council tax rebate and compulsory loan that won't cover half of the fuel bill rises. The cumulative effect of all this, and an increasingly dominant trend in Tory statecraft, is of active abstentionism and abrogation of governmental responsibility. Rishi Sunak's refusal to do anything to address the crisis, typified by his absurd "computer says no" argument is consistent with their don't-expect-us-to-do-anything-about-it. And this is where Rees-Mogg's civil service plan fits in. It is a prospectus for degrading the state, and so if it can't do anything simple, like processing passport applications, enforcing food and environmental standards, or can't guarantee the receipt of social security support on time, the thinking is the public are more likely to blame state inefficiency than Tory malfeasance for its decrepitude and not expect future governments to do anything. Which, for the Tories, minimises the scope of political responsibility and accountability, and allows for more showboating, frivolous initiatives, and policy that reinforces the interests the party articulates and promotes.

During his rounds of interviews, Rees-Mogg argued his war on the civil service was not a return to austerity. This is certainly a factually accurate statement, and one the left and labour movement should take on board. It's worse than that.

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