Top civil servants reveal they had 10 discussions with company before it finally took no for an answer
If only David Cameron had been able to follow the rules then a lot of the trouble around Greensill Capital could have been averted. And the rules are that you go straight to the top and message Boris Johnson directly – almost everyone except me seems to have his mobile number – and he will fix things right away. After all, it worked well enough for James Dyson. Only, the problem for Dave was that he and Boris Johnson have history. Put simply, Boris loathes Cameron: he still can’t forgive him for getting a better degree and becoming prime minister before him.
So the usual lobbying channels weren’t open to Dave, which meant he had to move lower down the food chain and text Rishi Sunak and the junior Treasury minister John Glen instead. After which things started to badly unravel, culminating in no fewer than six different inquiries into Tory sleaze and cronyism. One of which is being conducted by the public accounts committee and on Thursday morning was taking evidence from the two top civil servants at the Treasury – the permanent secretary, Tom Scholar, and his deputy, the second permanent secretary, Charles Roxburgh – who had been delegated to deal with the donkey work of Cameron’s lobbying activities.
