George Osborne, Minister without Responsibility

As some of you know, I’ve had a lovely time since Monday being run round the houses by, in turn, the Environment Agency, Defra, Downing Street and the Communities Department.

You see, nobody wants to take any responsibility for George Osborne’s New Garden City at Webbedfeet. Indeed, so confident is this unpleasant little Raubritter*, he is as I write making jokes at Labour’s expense about their lack of progress when in power at Ebbsfleet…a severe flood-risk area where apparently everything is now just perfect for the building of 15,000 homes, and the bloke who said don’t build any in 2009 is not talking to anyone in the media about it. Which is a fairly easy thing for him to do, because the media are f**king asleep as usual.

Anyway, the Ebbsfleet EA rollover it’s nothing to do with Toby Willinson, because he’s a campaign something or other nationally now, and it’s nothing to do with Defra because it’s about construction, and it’s nothing to do with Eric Pickles because it’s a water and habitats issue and there are no cow pies waiting to be eaten. And it’s nothing to do with George Osborne, because he merely announced it, he’s the Chancellor you know, he just makes cuts – and then reinstates them after 23,000 people have had their lives ruined by completely avoidable floods.

So you see, like the Somerset Levels floods, the Ebbsfleet risk-taking crooked repayment of a bunch of fat concrete dumpers is nobody’s fault. Somerset was not the EU’s fault, or the Tory MEP’s fault, or Nigel Mirage’s fault, or George Unborne’s fault…and Ebbsfleet won’t be either.

The trouble is….they’re all lying. Because it says here in the rulebook that they are all involved….and all ignoring the danger in order to get the munneeee.

You see, it’s a construction project, so it is Eric Pickles’ responsibility. It may be that all Mr Blobby needs to do is stay away from the site so as to avoid earthquakes, but he’s involved.

And it is the Environment Agency’s responsibility, because their direct report is being steamrollered, and lives put at risk, for short-term political gain. And so they should go public about it…or someone should resign. Or start a petition. Not hide like pathetic little girls. Not think of nothing beyond the pension. The Tory junior minister resigned over illegal building on Green belt land: obviously, she has more balls than the blokes at the EA.

And as it’s a building project involving environmental and animal habitat destruction, so it is double-dog-bloody certainly Defra’s job – unless they shouldn’t have been misculling badgers in the first place.

Now as it happens, I have a very slight acquaintance with Owen Paterson’s Civil Servant Permanent Secretary at Defra. She is a charming, honest and no-nonsense lady called Bronwyn Hill. This is how she responded when asked questions about flood management responsibility by the Public Accounts Committee three years ago:

Bronwyn is giving the PAC a free gift here: she is saying, “It’s not nobody’s responsibility, it’s everyone’s responsibility”. She’s actually saying “Drag everyone up and ask them to be counted”. Rare stuff from a civil servant. There is another exchange soon afterwards:

This too is a valid point: how can one agency do everything? And if you the politicians think it should, then why have you got three? Again, she’s saying we like to influence 95% of decisions so yes, most of the time we are responsible.

But the fact still remains that the young lady at Defra brushed me off and said it must be a communities issue, because it was construction, not environment. Well, she was wrong – and she was buck-passing.

There is a principle in our unwritten Constitution that concerns the issue of Cabinet responsibility. It was first highlighted by Walter Bagehot in the late 19th century, and it goes like this: if the Cabinet takes a decision and the sky falls in, everyone in the Cabinet must share the blame equally; and if they don’t like the decision at the time, then they must resign.

Bagehot was a clever bloke who quite rightly pointed out to slippery pols that they couldn’t have it both ways: either stay in your job and take the heat, or resign.

I really do not see why the principle should not apply to multi-agency issues for both senior Civil Servants and Ministers of the Crown. When it comes to flood risk decisionmaking, we can’t control the Sproutanauts in Brussels, but we most certainly can say – as Bronwyn Hill pointed out forcibly in her PAC evidence – that a massive construction project of national significance on a flood risk site where reed and fen habitats are being destroyed is a joint ops responsibility. Thus Owen Paterson, Eric Pickles and Toby Willinson should (among countless others) walk the plank if this barmy idea winds up drowning – or just ruining the lives of – people encouraged to go and live there.

When a bank fails, nobody is responsible. When there has been criminal market manipulation, nobody goes to jail. When there has been illegal building on undesignated land, nobody is put on trial. And when Whitehall makes corrupt and incompetent decisions, nobody gets fired or charged.

When friends of the Government and the police hack phones, nobody goes to jail. When sexual psychopaths assault young children in care, nobody is questioned, nobody is named…but celebrity gropers get charged with things they didn’t do.

I have said this many times before, but it bears both repitition and enhancement:

Accountability, Equality before the Law and the Rule of Law are strangers to the British élite. This is not a political problem, it is a cultural and constitutional problem. The governmental systems of the United Kingdom – from the police via the Treasury to the security services and the Foreign Office – are rotten to the core.

We do not need a Labour Government, we need a Resistance movement. Wake up and unite: everything British fair play stands for is having its face ground into the dirt – just as Orwell predicted. Forget tribes and class wars and gender and all the rest of the polemic angels on a pinhead. Focus. Focus, or lose your liberty, your democracy, and the right to look yourself in the eye.

* Raubritters – Mediaeval German robber knights who ground the People into the muck

Earlier at The Slog: Osborne pulled out some plums, but they turned out to be bollocks