The prime minister’s senior adviser and “enforcer”, Dominic Cummings, says he wants what amounts to a cultural revolution in Whitehall. If by welcoming what he called “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” in a provocative podcast early this year, he meant risk-takers, can-doers, people who understand the digital world and information technology, Whitehall certainly needs them. The mandarins of the permanent government need shaking up.
For far too long, they have been shielded from the rigours of the outside world, protected by a formidable array of weapons, notably the Official Secrets Act, a measure designed to deter whistle-blowers as much as potential spies.
But Whitehall’s arsenal includes much more subtle weapons than the criminal law. One such weapon is deployed with such little effort it can be easily overlooked. It is the use of language, a craft honed over many decades and embedded deep in Whitehall subculture. It is a weapon often used against MPs. As the late Sir Patrick Nairne, a widely respected mandarin, was honest enough to admit: “The secrecy culture of Whitehall is essentially a product of British parliamentary democracy; economy with the truth is the essence of a professional reply to a parliamentary question”.
