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A Very British Coup

Well, yes, OK, a coup it is then. The elected government exercising power over the permanent established bureaucracy. A coup.

And the problem with this is?

12 thoughts on “A Very British Coup”

  1. Bloke in North Dorset

    In situations like this I always like to look up the dictionary definitions of words. Marriam Webster gives us 2 definitions. The first is coup d’état, which is defined as:

    a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics

    There doesn’t seem to be any force involved, if fact the military seem to be bogged down helping rescue various state institutions from their incompetence.

    He therefore must mean this one:

    2: a brilliant, sudden, and usually highly successful stroke or act

    Lets hope it is successful.

  2. So Much For Subtlety

    Looks like a coup to me – the Deep State trying to un-do the voters’ will.

    We should be concerned.

  3. Scum like Sedwell don’t give a shite for the voters SMFS.

    Trouble is neither does Blojo and his gang.

    Nor will it be any sort of purge such as I advocate. A few hacks will go–prob some of Blojob’s Krony Krapitalist pals will be brought in–who be sabotaged by the rest of the SCS.

    Same tired old tale.

    BTW Does anyone know if the cockrot from Twitter about kissing the bride at your wedding getting you up to 2 years in jail is true? It sounds like total shite but in today’s age…

  4. I don’t think Cummings will get very far either, Ecksy, but if he upsets a few cunts like Powell on the way, it’s all to the good.

  5. To be fair, not all exercises of political power by democratically elected governments are inherently “democratic”, but these things are matters of degree. If the government decided there’d be no more elections for 20 years, I think 99% of people would say “undemocratic”. If the government of a country with 3-yearly election cycle decided to move to 4-yearly or 5-yearly instead, probably a bit less. Shutting down the courts and police and starting afresh by appointing your own judges and police chiefs… probably not a great sign. But if you live in a country where the police and justice system is deeply corrupt or had previously been co-opted by a nasty dictatorship, perhaps you need to clean out the stables. In this case “coup” is a bit of an overstatement, but the reason interested commentators are getting excited is they’re used to not much changing in this area, and yet change now seems to be afoot.

    I don’t think the British public as a whole is particularly fired-up about the idea of civil service reform, and it wasn’t a major issue at the election, so you’d be hard-pushed to say Boris has a sweeping democratic mandate for this. But then, the civil service has for decades had a not-especially-democratic reputation for stifling the power of elected governments to actually govern, so some sort of clash was inevitable once a government won a decent majority – if Corbyn had won in December, it sounds like John McDonnell was planning even more sweeping changes than Cummings. I’m not sure if this is a battle that the government can actually “win” bearing in mind how powerful institutional inertia is, and how difficult it is to force cultural change on an organic organisation. Particularly one largely based in London with lots of “Tony’s children” degree-educated staff, whose sense of what constitutes non-negotiable “core values” (the sort of things they believe transcend politics and therefore any government ought to stick to) is likely to be well askew from what Cummings or a typical Tory cabinet minister believes, let alone your typical Tory voter.

    One thing I don’t understand: someone in the Number 10 team (quite possibly Cummings) seems to be keen on badmouthing the civil service bods before they’re being deposed, and quite a lot of negativity towards the civil service is being expressed. Yet at the same time, a key part of the Cummings plan seems to be bringing in higher-quality leadership and expertise. I’m not sure how attractive the gig can be if it’s being made politically toxic and there’s such a threat of being undermined from the centre of government, even if Cummings intends that – with a suitably invigorated leadership – power within the civil service should become more decentralised and new leaders should have more autonomy. In general it isn’t an easy task to “impose” autonomy and “decentralise” from the centre. You can end up giving the appearance of meddling (because you don’t trust the calibre of people you’ve intended to entrust a task to) and it generates a lot of mixed messages.

  6. “think Hungary, think Poland.”

    Afaik Hungary and Poland are still Hungarian and Polish, and haven’t just put up with naggers vandalising their statues and explaining that there are too many Magyars and Polacks about for their liking.

  7. MBE–Fire the fucking lot of them in one go. 5000 sackings is far from the biggest redundancies in history. But I’d sack them sans compo and pension.

    The joke is that Blojo has already awarded himself the power to do just that. Only his jellyballs prevent him.

  8. Afaik Hungary and Poland are still Hungarian and Polish, and haven’t just put up with naggers vandalising their statues and explaining that there are too many Magyars and Polacks about for their liking.

    I believe the current euphemism among the kiddies at 4Chan is “Joggers” named after the excuse given for Ahmaud Arbery’s activities shortly before his death.

    As for the unCivil Service, certainly at the senior level they are a London-centric elite clique of Oxbridge educated white men. They are about as “diverse” as Lord Salisbury’s cabinet, but the worst thing about them is the prevailing attitude of “Managing decline”.

    Replacing them with (“God Forbid”) some new blood without ties of patronage to the current system might make the unCivil Service a bit more effective and responsive. Cutting the number of departments, QUANGO’s and employees of all types and grades would be a good idea as well.

    Government would be a lot more effective if there was a lot less of it. Start with Public Health England and work from there.

    That would get Britain moving again.

  9. Mr Galt–Blojob Jellyballs Johnson will do none of that. A small handful of SCS will go –to be replaced with equally useless Korporate Kronies from what passes for the business world these days. They will likely be useless but noisy in a cosmetic way (Kosmetic Korporate Kronies–the KKK) and will be sabotaged by the 4990-odd remaining members of the SCS.

  10. You have to love the name of the “top” civil servant union – FDA. Shortened from the more pretentious “Association of First Division Civil Servants” which implies these Establishment asshats are in some way above others when the opposite is true.

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