No one who was not involved in the process knows how the British ambassador to the United States’ confidential and critical memos about Donald Trump came to be in the hands of the Brexit Party’s in-house journalist, Isabel Oakeshott.
Without such knowledge, all anyone can do is speculate on the motivations and machinations behind the deliberate humiliation of one of the UK’s most senior and most respected civil servants, Sir Kim Darroch, for the crime of doing his job.
The most plausible, and thus the most repeated explanation, is that a Brexiteer with a high-ranking position within government, or a special adviser similarly inclined, has leaked the information to undermine both Sir Kim, an ardent Remainer, and perhaps to prevent Sir Mark Sedwill, the current cabinet secretary and most senior civil servant in the country, from replacing him.
Leaks are not uncommon, even major ones like this. But traditionally, they are done by Whitehall officials, or party rivals, to damage politicians. Rarely, if ever before, are they done with the express intention of damaging the civil service.
The Brexit fire is out of control. It is coming for reason, and it is coming for the truth. It is two and a half years since the UK’s ambassador to the European Union, Sir Ivan Rogers, resigned. When he did so, he told his Whitehall colleagues they must carry on having the courage to tell politicians the truth, even if it is a truth they do not wish to hear. Sir Ivan was, and is, the country’s leading expert on the internal politics of the European Union. Theresa May and her associates decided they did not need his advice.
Olly Robbins, the civil servant whom Theresa May appointed to lead her Brexit team inside No 10, has for several years done his civil service job amid outrageous attacks from the more rabidly pro-Brexit press, encouraged by Nigel Farage, Leave.EU and all the rest of the Eurosceptic faction that Vote Leave chief Dominic Cummings once referred to as “the flying monkeys”.
Robbins is now departing for the private sector.
High court judges with the temerity to interpret the law on whether parliament must be consulted before the triggering of Article 50 were labelled “enemies of the people” by the Daily Mail.
www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-civil-service-darroch-oakeshott-sedwill-a8995596.html