Why does nothing make sense?

Mingay…censured and yet smiling

Senior civil servants, Number Ten officials, and Coalition ministers are tonight looking inconsistent in their handling and judgement of the curious circumstances under which the West Coast rail franchise decision had to be abandoned….after which Sir Richard Branson was somehow allowed to kiss the Cameronian hand, and get the franchise back.

Transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin said at the start of this cover-up that he would “not hide from the seriousness” of the findings of the report on alleged malfeasance-cum-incompetence. But what we seem to have here is a report from Sam Laidlaw – DfT non-executive director and chief executive of Centrica – which (sources suggest) identifies some bad stuff that went on…and yet, the reinstatement of the three officials involved.

The key phrase in original DoT handouts was “completely unacceptable mistakes in the process” that led to the cancellation of the award of a new contract to FirstGroup to run the UK’s busiest intercity route. Now this has changed to “inaccurate reports of the bidding process”. While the former wording might sound more damning, in terms of potential wrongdoing the latter is far more serious: mistake = incompetence, but inaccurate could be taken to mean misleading. What’s more, the word ‘bidding’ has been added.

Whitehall sources this afternoon suggested that the Ministry was deeply at odds with Number Ten on the issue.

I understand that the inaccuracy related to errors in the way the officials presented the size of the bond the winning bidder needed to put down as a guarantee to the taxpayer. But the question remains to be answered: in what way, and why?

However, what in turn contradicts later events  is that the report clearly states there was ‘no evidence of bias against Virgin Rail by anyone in the department’. As this was the opposite of what Branson alleged to David Cameron, why did the PM give him the time of day?

The imputation I’m getting is that David Cameron and one intermediary involved felt that the bid was ‘irregular’, but the Department strongly refutes this. In the end, of course, it makes little difference: nobody got fired and the process is now closed.

Nevertheless, Kate Mingay earlier accused Number Ten of trying to scapegoat her, beginning legal proceedings to ram home her point. But suddenly today she withdrew the case…and was reinstated.

At the end of it, an unpleasant whiff of suspicion surrounds both sides of this row. The civil service seems to have been censured, but emerged unharmed (surely not?). And the PM seems to have been both brown-nosed and threatened, and given in.

I’m beginning to wonder these days if there is a straight bat anywhere in London SW1.