The Enemy Within...

There are more than 200 staff networks, which cover a range of characteristics, including veganism and paganism. However, there is little oversight of their activities.

And this is focussed on the Home Office, but I have it on good authority that they exist in every department of the civil service.

Now, the Policy Exchange think-tank has raised concerns about police neutrality after the official body representing Muslim cops in Britain published a report defending Hamas and attacking Israel.

Why do we allow Muslim police in the UK? 

Last year, the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) complained of 'unverified stories about acts of violence by Hamas' during the October 7 terror attacks in a 39-page document. The same report, written by the association's then-vice-president Khaldoun Kabbani, also described the Israel Defence Forces as a 'Zionist terrorist group' and compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the Holocaust.

NAMP went on to drop the document, called 'Confronting Anti-Muslim Hatred and Promoting Human Rights', from its website. It said the views expressed were those of Mr Kabbani, who had since left the association. But Policy Exchange said the document's publication raised concerns about the impartiality of police officers, who are required to treat all members of the public equally under the law.

Those questions existed long before this latest example of how debased our police has allowed to become! 

Policy Exchange's report also accused the National Police Chiefs' Council of watering down proposed rules on police impartiality for staff networks.

Its authors have called for a new 'Police Impartiality Act', setting out requirements for police forces, associations and members.

More legislation to tinker at the edges, instead of ripping out the root cause root and branch. 

In an endorsement, Baroness Falkner of Margravine, the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: 'Too often, as this paper shows, we see staff networks straying into contested ideological, religious or political territory. If the public no longer believe they can trust that the police will always... act without fear or favour, we would see risks to the rule of law itself.'

Too late, Baroness, we already believe that, because we've seen too much. 

It's Not Such A Bad Idea...

But they picked the wrong games:

Civil servants played the graphic video game Grand Theft Auto to explore Britons' 'everyday lives'. Policy Lab, which was founded in 2014 to apply 'design thinking' to government policy, said it was 'crucial' for policymakers to use virtual worlds to learn about British people's 'hopes and dreams'. Popular games including GTA, Fortnite and World of Warcraft were all earmarked as relevant to the policy process.

Why focus on a game that simulates criminals in America when there’s so many other useful games that they could use? 

Researchers said meeting people online could be useful for those working remotely or who struggled to speak face-to-face.

This is undoubtedly true as playing World of Warcraft, and especially Guild runs to bring down bosses helped me immensely when holding Teams meetings with multiple participants. And Jurassic World Evolution would be of benefit to prison officers who have to keep their inmates from causing havoc in the outside world.

Policy Lab is funded by paid commissions and is hosted by the Department for Education, though any government department is able to use it.

I’m suggesting that council planning department train their town planners on SimCity or other type city builder -type games,  which would inform them that building more and more housing is doomed to failure if you don’t also build the underlying infrastructure that houses rely on. 

Policy Lab said it had worked with more than 7,000 civil servants to form policy through practical projects, building skills and knowledge and inspiring new thinking. A government spokesperson said: 'We are reforming the civil service to create a cost-conscious culture that relentlessly roots out waste, drives efficiency, and protects taxpayers' money. We are currently looking into this initiative.'

Its a damn good idea in my opinion if they just choose their games a little more competently. 

I Remain Unconvinced...

Ministers must end “barking mad” restraints on civil service pay or risk being unable to recruit the technical and digital specialists it needs to keep pace, a union leader has warned.

Really?  

Mike Clancy, the Prospect general secretary, said the government should end the “rightwing trope” that restrained the pay of highly skilled civil servants and left government unable to compete with the private sector. He said it should be realistic for senior specialists in competitive fields to be paid more than the prime minister.

Can't argue against this! But isn't this more an indictment of the woeful performance of the Prime Minister than the spectacular performance of the civil serpents?

In an interview with the Guardian, Clancy also told the government to take more care with its approach to deregulation, and said it could risk falling foul of its own Employment Rights Act.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!  

Clancy was the TUC’s lead on the Employment Rights Act, and said he was concerned about how angrily business groups were still lobbying against the changes. He said the government should come out more forcefully to demonstrate that there had been a fundamental shift back towards workers in the labour market.

That'll be difficult, since there hasn't been one.  

If We Haven't Needed It For 10 Years, Why Do We Need It Now?

Ministers will bring in a new “school of government” for senior civil servants to train them in AI and other skills – more than a decade after David Cameron axed the previous college for Whitehall.

Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, will announce the new body in a speech on Tuesday setting out the government’s plans to “rewire” the civil service for modern times. Cameron’s decision to close the previous national school of government at Sunningdale has been widely considered a mistake, with growing fees for external providers.

Considered a 'mistake' by whom? Anyone we should take any notice of?  

Ahead of the speech, Jones said he was determined to “work with the civil service to change the system, promote innovation and build in-house state capacity to get things done”.

Aimed at improving the training of senior civil servants, its programme will include knowledge on economics, finance, policy, leadership and management, commercial, AI, data and digital, programme and project management and delivery.

Maybe it's just me, but shouldn't they have all that already, in order to get to be senior civil servants in the first place? 

His speech, due on Tuesday with a promise to “move fast, fix things”, will build on existing plans to halve government spending on external consultants and reduce departmental administration costs by 16% over the next five years, delivering savings of £2bn a year by 2030.

Aha! That's who consider this a mistake then - the consultants who were suckling at the teat of government! 

In an interview with the Times last week, Jones also suggested he would increase performance-related pay and more civil servants would be “shown the door” if not meeting standards.

Oh, when have I heard that one before?  

You Can 'Fool All Of The People, All Of The Time' If They Work For You

Civil service morale rose slightly after Labour took power in 2024, with the biggest jumps in satisfaction in the energy and health departments, an annual Whitehall monitor report will show.The survey from the Institute for Government (IfG) thinktank, due to be published this week, found that morale rose from 60.7 to 61.2% on the civil service employee engagement index.

The engagement index recorded a decade of steady improvement in civil service morale from 2010 to a peak of 63.6% in 2020, followed by three consecutive years of decline from 2021 to 2023.

Most departments’ scores rose slightly in 2024 but the biggest improvers were the Department of Health and Social Care, led by Wes Streeting, and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, led by Ed Miliband, where morale increased by 5 and 7 percentage points respectively.

Is there a 'but' coming? Reader, you know there is... 

Only four departments recorded falls in morale in 2024 – the Foreign Office, HM Revenue and Customs, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Transport.

Hardly surprising, when you look at the choices on offer on the form: 

The transport department had the largest drop, of three percentage points. This included 13-point falls between 2023 and 2024 for the questions “when changes are made in my organisation they are usually for the better”, and “I have the opportunity to contribute my views before decisions are made that affect me”. The department had falls of 9-10 points for “I think it is safe to challenge the way things are done in my organisation”, “I believe that change is managed well in my organisation”, and “I believe that senior managers in my organisation will take action on the results from this survey”.

It's damning, isn't it?  

This Man Never Heard The Phrase 'Quit While You're Ahead'...

Martin Bentley, 67, was 'prepared to use whatever means he could' to avoid going back to the office when Covid lockdown rules were relaxed, a tribunal in Liverpool heard. He got his way and worked from home until his retirement in 2024, despite an Occupational Health report suggesting he could work in person with no issue. 

But that wasn't enough for him, oh dear me no...

After attempting to sue HMRC for disability discrimination, Mr Bentley was branded as 'vexatious' and ordered to pay £20,000 as his claims would never have succeeded.

That's for his share of the costs of his hopeless case. Anyone else would keep their mouths shut, but not Mr Bentley, who has rushed to press to blame - his union! 

Mr Bentley has not blamed himself for what happened, but instead holds his union accountable, claiming it encouraged him to take legal action. At his home on the 12th floor of a block of flats in Bootle, Mr Bentley told the Daily Mail: 'I have to pay back £240 every month until the money is all paid back.

'I am more angry with my union, the Public and Commercial Services Union, than anyone else. They encouraged me to go down this path, saying they had never seen a worse case of victimisation.''But then they abandoned me. They didn't even turn up for the hearing, leaving me on my own.'

They could clearly see the way the wind was blowing, given the wealth of evidence presented at the tribunal about the way HMRC bent over backwards to accommodate his claims. 

During his time at HMRC, he gave evidence for a female colleague's employment tribunal. Her allegations had been against Michael Connell, who, upon finding out that Mr Bentley had given evidence against him, sent him a Teams message describing him as a 'spineless little f***ing worm' and a 'sneaky slimy prick'.He later claimed he had been abused and that his department had done little to support him.

It shows just what sort of idiots they hire for HMRC when someone decides to abuse a subordinate on a recordable communication app open to the rest of the team. 

The Likely Story To End All Likely Stories

Post office operators yet to claim compensation of at least £600,000 each relating to the Horizon IT scandal have not been chased up by officials because the government did not want to “harass” them with letters, it has emerged.

Who believes that? If you do, I've got a bridge to sell you!

In a report criticising the speed and handling of payouts after the Post Office scandal, the House of Commons public accounts committee (PAC) said the government is taking “insufficient action” identifying all the operators eligible to claim some of the £1.7bn being paid out across four compensation schemes.

When asked by the PAC why it was not following up letters that had not received a reply, the government said that it was “concerned that individuals receiving letters would feel harassed if they had a series of letters asking the same thing”.

Oh, please! Is that really the best they can come up with? 

The Post Office made a pre-tax loss of £612m last year, while its debts have ballooned to more than the value of its assets, and is to close 115 loss-making branches, putting 2,000 jobs at risk.

If it was a horse, it would be heading for the glue-factory in the knacker’s van by now. 

Perhaps We Should Hope For Women Scotland (FWS) Stand For Election...

They seem to be capable of planning ahead, after all:

Tearful hugs were exchanged and a bottle of champagne was cracked open.The fact someone had thought to bring one along underlines that it was potentially on the cards, but For Women Scotland (FWS) still seemed shocked by the scale of their victory.

The Scottish government's argument - that sex can be changed via the gender recognition process, and that someone with a gender recognition certificate should have the protections of that sex - were dismissed.

So what does it all mean?

BBC News was making a lot of noise about how guidelines would need to change, and how legislators would have a lot of work to do over the next few months: 

The Equality and Human Rights Commission - which oversees the application of the Equality Act - is to issue new guidance to help service providers.

Why don't they issue it now? Is it possible they didn't think ahead, and prepare two versions, ready to rush out when whichever side won? 

But Those Cops And Social Workers Are Still In A Job, Gaby

And that's the real issue. They shouldn't be. 

"Sophie" was 12 years old when she walked into Oldham police station to report a sexual assault. For a vulnerable child, first befriended and then viciously exploited by much older men, that must have taken courage. But officers simply told her to come back when she wasn’t drunk. It was a terrible missed opportunity, as an independent review of so-called grooming gang allegations in Oldham commissioned by the Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham made clear in 2022. Sophie was picked up from the police station and driven to a house where she was raped by multiple men. Many years later, she learned that although a man eventually convicted of abusing her had given Greater Manchester police two other names, they had inexplicably failed to follow these leads.

Why is this - and the thousands of other instances where the authorities failed to do their job - not the main driver of the public's ire? Taxpayer money squandered on 'services' that failed miserably. 

There are thousands of Sophies out there, yet they are already slipping through the cracks of a debate that is supposedly about them: becoming pawns in an unedifying power struggle on the right of British politics, as the world’s richest man tests the limits of his influence over it.

At least he's keeping the pressure on, Gaby. I don't see anyone at the 'Guardian' stepping up to the plate.  

The BNP first tried to capitalise on rumours of Asian men exploiting white girls in Oldham a decade and a half ago, apparently distributing leaflets reading Our Children Are Not Halal Meat. Now Reform UK is demanding a new national inquiry into an already exhaustively examined scandal, the deportation of perpetrators with dual nationality – that many, not all, perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage is an awkwardly inescapable part of the story – and the jailing of anyone caught looking the other way, while Kemi Badenoch races to keep up and her rival Robert Jenrick races to outdo her.

Why is it 'awkward'? Usually, if crime is being committed by identifiable groups, that helps the police efforts, doesn't it? 

“I have a message for the legacy media,” announced the academic turned Reform cheerleader Prof Matt Goodwin. “If you’d been doing your job, we wouldn’t need Elon Musk.”

A message that should be resonating. But it isn't. 

My guess is Musk will lose this fight, because it’s Farage Reform members come to see: bounding onstage to denounce the “mass rape abomination” – his audience consider the phrase “grooming gangs” too soft – and accusing Starmer of failing to prosecute rapists, before arguing that the Conservatives were practically as bad.

The phrase IS too soft and yes, the Conservatives did fuck all for 13 years, but they are out and Labour are in! The buck stops where, Gaby? 

What may resonate, however, is the nagging sense that justice has still not entirely been done. With no police officer sacked or professional charged over arguably Britain’s worst child protection scandal, we are lacking a sense of catharsis.

So why aren't you using your pulpit to call for that, Gaby, instead of whining about Musk and Farage? 

Survivors need to know that in future such failure will have consequences, which is why Starmer is right to signal a new criminal offence of failing to report abuse, as recommended by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse set up under Theresa May.

What good will that do, when the people they were reporting it to covered it up and ignored it!  It's just yet more useless legislation! 

A Rose By Any Other Name...

...might not pass muster at the Passport Office, because they are all stupid:

Parents who want to name their children after Disney characters, global brands, football teams or sci-fi heroes may well want to think again, as it could make travelling a nightmare in time to come. That was the scenario facing one family this week when they faced missing a dream holiday to the Dominican Republic because of their son's name. A passport application for youngster Loki Skywalker Mowbray was thrown out by Home Office officials 'for copyright issues'.

Incorrectly, actually - this story has already surfaced and been blown out of the water once. So much for civil servants 'learning lessons'.

His disappointed father, soldier and massive Star Wars fan Christian Mowbray, 48, from Woodbridge, Suffolk, was told to change his son's name or get permission from the copyright owner Disney to use the name 'Skywalker'. While the Home Office has since U-turned on their decision, their experience serves as a cautionary tale to others - including people considering changing their birth names by deed poll - not to fall foul of the Home Office's pernickety rules for passports.

They don't need to, the Home Office needs to ensure the people that 'work' there understand the rules. Something they seem to find hard to do.  

The Home Office...Powerless Against Fiction

A six-year-old girl had her passport application rejected ahead of a dream holiday to Disneyland because she is named after a Game of Thrones character.

Whut? 

Khaleesi Holloway's mother, Lucy, had to halt plans for the £2,000 trip after she was told her daughter's name broke trademark rules. The Passport Office said they were unable to issue a passport unless Warner Brothers agreed because it owned the trademark for the name Khaleesi. Officials told Lucy to contact the American film and entertainment studio to get permission to use it.

I can only imagine how Warner Brothers would have answered that call!  

However the Home Office, which runs the Passport Office, has since confirmed that a mistake had been made and that the application is now being processed.

Is every single branch of the civil service now incapable of organising a fuck in a brothel? 

Solicitors advised Lucy that although Warner Brothers own a trademark for Game of Thrones, it is for goods and services not a person's name.

Officials from the Passport Office later called Lucy to apologise, saying that the guidance staff had been given only applies to people changing their names.

So the guidance is STILL wrong!  

Only In Brighton

 

How drunk do you have to be? And the Civil Service thinks it's got problems! 

Is This Why The Civil Service Has Become The Enemy Within?

Ahmar, who is of Egyptian and French dual heritage, said she raised concerns about racism and was increasingly blocked from meetings before being told that her secondment from the Treasury was ending abruptly for “poor behaviour”.

Because this is the sort of recruitment 'success' that's made them what they are today?  

An employment tribunal hearing against the Cabinet Office and senior civil servants began on Monday alleging a “hostile racist working environment” but the case was withdrawn on Wednesday. Ahmar had lodged two claims arguing she was subject to “direct discrimination and harassment on the grounds of her sex and race” as well as “victimisation”. The Cabinet Office said her claims were “completely unfounded” and noted that Ahmar had withdrawn the case with no payment made. She said she walked away because she was starting a new job on Friday and did not want to spend a month in court.

I wonder if it's a real job this time or just another civil service department appointment?  

In the interview, Ahmar said that “the whole illegal migration taskforce was really clumsy, made of people who don’t know anything about migration or really understand why people would want to come to this country”.

They understand that 'people who want to come to this country' for legitimate reasons don't do it by smuggling themselves in lorries or small boats. Why don't you?   

Ahmar said the taskforce was “looking into migration from a very narrow point of view” and that they “didn’t want to look into safe and legal routes” to bring asylum seekers to Britain. Ultimately, Ahar said, she “didn’t really feel comfortable being head of policy in a taskforce where they talk about things like [using] turnaround tactics, so they can just die, basically.” She said: “The civil servants are all white. They don’t understand how hard it is for migrants to be here.”

We aren't talking about 'migrants', we are talking about illegal immigrants.  

Ahmar first took a secondment from the Treasury to become a chief of staff before Cop26 in 2021, before being ordered to leave the climate summit early after complaining of bullying and harassment.

A serial complainer, then. Is this why nothing ever gets done?   

Shutting That Stable Door Again…

Some small businesses that received tax breaks for their innovation work are now being chased to pay the money back. HMRC is reassessing past research and development (R&D) tax relief claims, after underestimating the level of error and fraud over many years.

Silly me, thinking that sort of assessment should come before they hand out the cash... 

Optometrist and entrepreneur Mr Patel received the money in 2022 for work during 2020-21 on a potential new lighting product, a portable device which would project light that looked like daylight, even though it filtered out shorter wavelength blue light. In January 2023 he got a "notice of enquiry", informing him that a compliance check on his claim found similar products already in existence.

Mr Patel says that the product he was working on was innovative at the time. He has almost finished developing it but hasn't brought it to market yet.

We gave him taxpayer cash for innovation for a product already on the market? FFS! Still, it's about the level of expertise we've come to expect from HMRC, frankly.

Many small businesses have been in touch about this issue, according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) (Ed: unfortunate acronym!). "It's very clear that HMRC is mishandling its approach to past and present R&D claims in a way that undermines the innovative small firms who are needed if we are to grow our economy," says Tina McKenzie, policy chair for the FSB.

I'm not too sure they are going to do that if they 'invent' things already in existence. 

R&D tax credits were introduced in 2000 and are designed to help start-up companies, by giving them tax relief when they invest in innovation. However, it has been reported that in recent years some companies have been abusing the system. HMRC has estimated that more than £1bn was lost to error and fraud in tax relief to smaller businesses at the height of the pandemic in 2020-21, the year Mr Patel made his claim.

Ah, the pandemic. The answer to all difficult questions about where the money has gone these days. 

Money Well Spent, For Once...

Nearly £590,000 of taxpayers' money has been spent on asking civil servants how they feel about the office and working from home, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

...and I don't say that about civil serpents very often!

The work has been driven by the Government Property Agency (GPA), a quango in charge of all Government office space. It claims to be 'helping transform the way the Civil Service works and reshaping the relationship civil servants have with their place of work'.

Surely the only 'relationship' that counts is 'work gets done, they get paid for it'? If that's happening, who cares where the work is getting done? 

Its survey concluded that only three per cent of employees wanted to go back to the office full-time after lockdown.

In which case, can we, the taxpayer, please stop footing the bill for huge expensive offices in London and other major cities? 

The GPA calls Leesman a 'world leader in measuring workplace experience'. It told the MoS: 'It is critical that civil servants have a voice that shapes their workplaces so that the spaces we deliver can best support them.'

What about us taxpayers? Don't we get a voice? 

The Cabinet Office said: 'These surveys... are used to ensure we can maximise the number of people working in the office. Since 2020 any surveys conducted have not included any questions on working from home. Using independent assessments, we can ensure that money spent on office space delivers true value to taxpayers.'

In other words, the emphasis will be on whipping these people into the office in order to justify having built or leased it in the first place. Why is this so cart before the horse? 

Of Course It Is...

Government officials warned it was 'open season on ministers' last night as Health Secretary Steve Barclay became the latest senior politician to face bullying allegations. He was accused of 'bad behaviour' towards staff in the Department of Health and Social Care since being appointed last summer.

But allies and ex-colleagues of Mr Barclay denied the allegations and suggested civil servants may now feel 'emboldened' to 'go after' ministers they did not like.

Well, yes. If Sunak and Raab had stuck to their guns and showed a bit of backbone, they'd have had no choice but to back down. Or quit. 

Either way, win/win for the government. 

Sources told The Guardian that Mr Barclay – a former Government whip and Brexit Secretary – was 'constantly angry' and had 'blasted' staff, who in turn found him 'quite challenging'.

Boo hoo hoo! Toughen up, then. 'Challenging' should be in the job description at that level. 

Of course, we all know what's really driving this, don't we? 

Facing Adversity...

Ouch! Nice one, Matt...

Yes, You Can, Actually...

...you can resign and find a job more to your liking:

One worker said on the noticeboard: ‘I find the Government proposal totally unethical and it impacts directly upon my workstream. As a civil servant, can I refuse this type of work in contravention of my own ethics?’

Truly, they are 'the enemy within', aren't they? 

The level of negativity in the Home Office is further evidence of attempts to undermine Miss Patel’s efforts to tackle the Channel migrant crisis. Earlier this year, a union representing most Border Force workers joined a migrant charity to challenge the legality of measures to turn boats back to France.

'Negativity' is fine, we all get asked to do things by our employers that we might find distasteful or unworkable. But we either suck it up or leave.  

This, however, is something worse. If Boris's government cannot crush this, why should we vote for his party in May?

Time To Put DEFRA Down Humanely..?

...sources at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs say some animals on the airlift were infected with Brucella canis, a bacterial infection that can cause spontaneous abortions in affected animals – and in rare cases can be passed to humans.

Well, since they are in quarantine, what should that matter? Does DEFRA usually whisper in the ear of tame journalists about the results of their tests?  

A leaked voice message obtained by The Mail on Sunday at the time revealed the behind-the-scenes bitterness over the airlift, with Mr Farthing telling a Ministry of Defence official he would ‘spend the rest of my time f****** destroying’ him if he did not secure clearance for a flight out of the country.

Ah, I see. This is revenge. But surely Pen Farthing has complied with the regulations? 

Reader, of course he has... 

Mr Farthing said: ‘The Nowzad charity has always been fully compliant with the regulations as laid out by Defra for the import of dogs from Afghanistan.

'If further testing is needed currently beyond what is normally required for entry to the UK, then our charity will be more than happy for those tests to be carried out by Defra.

‘We are happy to report the first batch of 12 dogs and two cats were given the all-clear last week. The remainder will continue with their predetermined quarantine as per Defra regulations for entry to the UK.’

So fuck you, DEFRA. You fucked with the wrong Marine. Pick on soft targets you can destroy with impunity in fut...

Oh!

They Fight Harder In The Media Than They Ever Did On The Battlefield...

Mr Farthing’s publicity campaign has angered the MoD because of the distraction it has provided from the ‘core mission’ of airlifting refugees.

The civil servants, that is, who are mustering their forces for a PR war. Not the UK troops. 

A defence source said: ‘This selfish charade has cost lives.’ Another source said the MoD’s help to evacuate animals meant ‘this is the first British Government explicitly committed to the idea of non-white people as equivalent to animals since the abolition of slavery.’

I'd put them above, frankly. As would many people. Far more than you'd care to admit. 

Yesterday, senior Tory MP and former soldier Tom Tugendhat issued a withering condemnation of the way MoD resources had been used for the animal evacuation.

Mr Tugendhat, who served in Afghanistan, revealed how his former interpreter, who is now stuck in Kabul, asked him: ‘Why is my five-year-old worth less than your dog?

‘I didn’t have an answer,’ he says.

I'll give you an answer. It's because your five-year-old may not grow up with gratitude in his heart, while the animals certainly will. Also, no-one is stealing my taxes to pay for the upkeep of Pen's animals.

Ben Wallace hit out at the “bullying, falsehoods and threatening behaviour” by those backing Paul “Pen” Farthing, who founded the charity Nowzad and has made a dash for the airport along with his 25 Afghan staff, their families and 173 rescued animals. Wallace had agreed to allow them to land a privately chartered plane to fly them to Britain, but Farthing said while his convoy had run the gauntlet of Taliban guards, it had been stuck outside the airport for 10 hours.

But why would people expect the civil servants to assist the evacuation of animals based on public outcry, I hear you ask? 

Attention has been drawn to Farthing’s campaign to evacuate his animals because a friend and fellow animal welfare campaigner, Dominic Dyer, told Mail+ that Boris Johnson had “pushed the issue” and his wife, Carrie Johnson, “most certainly had something to do with the change”.

However, a government source has denied such lobbying took place. Speaking on Thursday, the prime minister himself said: “I’ve had absolutely no influence on any particular case, nor would that be right. That’s not how we do things in this country.”

Except when it is, Boris..?