This is no dead cat – the government seems determined to undermine Whitehall under the ruse of saving money
The vast majority of the UK’s 475,000-odd civil servants are sick of political psychodrama, and don’t care exactly when Boris Johnson decides to scuttle off into the gilded obscurity of the panel comedy shows, neoliberal speaking circuits and biography discount bins that are his natural habitat. But we do care about the damage his necrotic and bullying period of misrule threatens to wreak on public services, and the kind of country he seems intent on creating.
The omens aren’t good: we woke up on Saturday to a fawning interview in the Daily Mail, which confirmed Johnson’s incendiary plans to fix the cost of living crisis by cutting civil service numbers by a fifth, down to levels last seen in 2016.
