"A Tory is a person who regards authority as immanent in institutions..."
To see members of the Conservative Party attacking a judge-led public inquiry is a disheartening departure from what should be one of their fundamental tenets
Defining conservatism or a conservative is not easy. The title of this essay takes its phraseology from Enoch Powell, who got it all wrong on race, and whose perception of Conservatism—or Toryism—was as mystical and romantic as any proposed after the Second World War. But it was not a controversial thing to say that a Tory was a respecter of institutions, from the Church of England through the Brigade of Guards and the Carlton Club to the House of Lords. Whether you were a full-blown reactionary or a cautious advocate of incremental change, to be a Conservative was to believe in order, discipline and the beneficence of ancient rituals, rites and ceremonies. Powell also said that “A Tory is someone who thinks institutions are wiser than those who operate them”. To take another conservative thinker, the late Sir Roger Scruton held that we came into the world “subject to institutions and traditions that contain within them a precious inheritance of wisdom”, and that “conservatives saw individual liberty as issuing from political order”.
Extraordinary, then, that we have seen over the last few days Conservative politicians not just resisting the work of the public inquiry established to examine the Covid-19 pandemic but actually attacking its existence and the activity of its chair, the former Vice-President of the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, Baroness Hallett KC. The proximate cause of the dispute is the disclosure to the inquiry team of WhatsApp messages, diaries and notebooks belonging to former prime minister Boris Johnson (who, lest we forget, set up the inquiry in May 2021 and appointed Hallett as its chair in December 2021), with the Cabinet Office arguing that much of the material is not relevant.
There is a wearily predictable element of farce to this. The inquiry has stated that the material requested must be handed over by 4.00 pm on Thursday. A spokesman for Johnson says that the unhorsed premier has “no objection to disclosing the material to the inquiry”. The Cabinet Office, however, has responded with fierce pomposity:
We are firmly of the view that the Inquiry does not have the power to request unambiguously irrelevant information that is beyond the scope of this investigation. This includes the WhatsApp messages of Government employees which are not about work but instead are entirely personal and relate to their private lives.
An anonymous source added with grave concern that releasing the information would “set a dangerous precedent”, a favourite phrase of the bureaucrat which conjures up vague but threatening visions, and it could have a “potential adverse impact on policy formulation in the future”.
To add to the festivities, however, the inquiry team has indicated that it has been informed that the Cabinet Office does not have the messages, notebooks or diaries in its possession: if this is the case it must present a statement to that effect, verified by a statement of truth, to Lady Hallett and her team by the Thursday deadline. This leads to all sorts of questions: if the Cabinet Office is not in possession of the material, who is? Are there copies? Have officials at the Cabinet Office read all the material? If not, how can they know it is irrelevant? Should the government, in effect, have the power to decide what it will and will not disclose to a public inquiry?
Most reactions to this bizarre impasse have been predictable. Opposition parties have demanded full disclosure: as they have been nowhere near power for a decade and more (only eight years in the case of the Liberal Democrats, one must concede), and given that politicians are rarely capable of looking forward more than a few weeks and seeing that sauce for the goose can very readily become sauce for the gander, they feel they have nothing to lose from the absolutely maximal disclosure of records.
Lord Kerslake, who was head of the Home Civil Service from 2011 to 2014, has weighed in to raise a mandarin eyebrow at the situation. He told Sky News that “It’s really very strange, resisting handing over things that you now claim you don’t have”. Kerslake is never reticent in airing criticisms of the government, and undertook a review of HM Treasury on behalf of the then-shadow chancellor, John McDonnell; his apparent closeness to the Labour Party has been the subject of some criticism in the past. Nevertheless, he speaks with Whitehall authority, and even if he had pulled on a Labour jersey, his former colleagues have left the goal undefended.
This administrative fankle is unfortunate and raises some serious questions about who has the final authority over disclosure of evidence for public inquiries. But what is outrageous is the way in which some notable figures who should know better have waded into the situation without a care for propriety or the integrity of institutions. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former work and pensions secretary whose two-year party leadership is best forgotten, snapped that the inquiry was becoming a “whodunnit” instead of a “whatdunnit” (which, while not especially catchy, doesn’t even make sense).
It’s completely unnecessary chasing individuals. They are on a fishing expedition and they should stop fishing. There is enough evidence out there to know what went wrong.
Duncan Smith seems very sure that there is “enough evidence”, a judgement one might have thought better left to the inquiry itself. Indeed, one might argue that is the purpose of the inquiry. But the former leader preferred to caricature Hallett, a former judge of the Court of Appeal, remember, as “trying to be Agatha Christie”.
Johnson, of course, is fighting a scorched-earth rearguard action which would have impressed the Russian soldiers who fell back before Napoleon in 1812. He has already attempted to discredit and smear the inquiry which the House of Commons Committee of Privileges is conducting into whether he misled MPs, as I wrote in March, and some of his die-hard supporters like former culture secretary Nadine Dorries and former Conservative Party treasurer Lord Cruddas have stepped up to add their weight to his efforts. (Would it be unkind to recall that Cruddas was forced to resign as treasurer in 2012 after offering access to then-prime minister David Cameron in return for monetary donations? Or that only last October Dorries was criticised by the DCMS Committee for having “traduce[d] the reputation of Channel 4” with “groundless” claims? Perhaps.) Anonymous supporters of Johnson accuse the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, who is in charge of the Cabinet Office, of orchestrating “a political stitch-up”.
And Johnson himself has launched into the injured-party bluster which must be horribly familiar to so many at Westminster.
I think it’s ridiculous that elements of my diary should be cherry-picked and handed over to the police, to the Privileges Committee, without even anybody having the basic common sense to ask me what these entries referred to.
The former prime minister fails to realise that, outside the tightening circle of devotees to his strange cult, he has no credibility as a truth-teller or someone who might act with probity and honesty. His three-year premiership demonstrated an attitude to the truth which took flexibility to unimagined lengths. If he sets himself up against a former judge leading a public inquiry, he will simply not be believed by the electorate.
The final rank idiocy is demonstrated by those who see Johnson’s plight as part of a wider conspiracy by the civil service, the establishment, the “blob”, the liberal media or anyone else they can conjure up to wreak revenge on Brexiteers. This alleged conspiracy is lapping around Johnson’s midriff but has already, in their view, claimed the career of Dominic Raab, the former deputy prime minister, and has crashed against the home secretary Suella Braverman. One mysterious Conservative told The Daily Telegraph: “Unless the leadership acts to stop it and shows support for Boris, Suella and Raab there will be action against the leadership”.
This simply has to stop. Not only is a party wracked by infighting almost certain to lose a general election, let alone one divided over an absurd, bone-headed, paranoid belief that “they’re out to get us”, but the reckless slashing by Johnson and his fellow-travellers is doing very serious damage to our political institutions. Challenged by the Committee of Privileges? Tear it down, discredit it, attack its members and chair. Confronted by the chair of a public inquiry? Trash the process, dismiss its relevance, make personal attacks on the chair. These would be appalling acts of political and institutional violence if perpetrated by the Labour Party. For them to be the indulgence of short-sighted and half-witted Conservative politicians is beyond contempt. This tomfoolery has, unfortunately, drawn battle lines. Do you value and respect the institutions by which we do business? Have you any regard for the venerable architecture of the British state? If you do, it’s very simple: stop tearing them down.