Letter to Baron Bethell #20

On Questions of Accountability

Letters from Vienna #197

Letter to Baron Bethell #20

On Questions of Accountability

Dear James,

I’m not sure if you watched “Yes Minister” as a teenager but I certainly did. There is even one episode in which a character says:

““I’ve always thought that Permanent Under-Secretary is such a demeaning title,” he (Charlie) said. Humphrey’s eyebrows shot up.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It sounds like an assistant typist or something,” said Charlie pleasantly, and Humphrey’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “Whereas,” he continued in the same tone, “you’re really in charge of everything, aren’t you?”[1]

Of course, Charlie was spot on, as I was too, when I wrote that civil servants and not ministers run the government; I got an A at A-Level as a direct consequence; the examiners realised that I knew a thing or two (and, as my teacher freely admitted: considerably more than he did!).

When my father introduced me to the top civil servant of a ministry in Vienna I asked him point blank if things were done in Vienna in much the same way they were in London. At first, he was puzzled and squinted in my direction; then I explained:

“In England it is the civil servants who take all the decisions, not the ministers.”

“Well,” he replied, “there are intelligent ministers and not so intelligent ministers.”

I wonder how many ministers are or were as unhappy as Alan Clark was, who intensely disliked the “general dreariness of government”.[2]

He once wrote (in disconsolate fashion) on a beautiful June day:

“It’s not yet eight o’clock and already I’ve been in my office half an hour. I like to get here early, before anyone else arrives, then I can scowl at them through the communicating doorway as they take their places around the outer office. I am still so ignorant of the basic material that this is one of the few ways I can start to assert an ascendancy.”

“It is (naturally and heartbreakingly) a glorious summer morning, and I have drawn back to their maximum extent the sliding windows, thus buggering or – I trust – partially buggering the air conditioning system. There is a tiny balcon, a gutter really, with a very low parapet, below knee height. Certain death on the Victoria Street pavement eight floors below. Sometimes I get a wild urge to relieve my bladder over it, splattering on the ant-like crowds.”[3]

“I am a privileged prisoner. I sit in my little cell room off the top, white, ministerial corridor, listlessly opening a mountain of constituency mail, “taken into solitary confinement for his own protection”. My mental process is already torpid with ennui.”[4]

I remember hearing stories about how Sir Keith Joseph was going slowly mad and how he was seen in the corridors of power banging his head against the wall. That particular story I believed, after all: he looked the part. What I never found plausible (although I heard the story from several sources, including my Protestant relatives in Northern Ireland) was the one about Harold Wilson being a Soviet spy; that I instinctively knew to be pure invention.

When it came to spies I think it more likely that Thatcher was one (MI5 & the CIA) or Blair (MI5), who got caught out for an indiscretion early on. Politicians, as a rule, especially the more powerful ones, tend to work for some secret agency or other.

Thus, George Bush who worked for the CIA (as director), is said to have run the Reagan White House, was then in office himself (after miraculously surviving Iran-Contra) before being replaced by another Deep State actor with ties to the CIA: Bill Clinton. And what did Obama’s mother do in Indonesia? She drew up death lists on behalf of the CIA. Why should one be surprised that Britain is no different? Why should it astonish that Wilson mysteriously resigned (without giving a reason) after a curious meeting with George Bush? Or that there was very nearly a coup d’état in the UK in 1974? Or that all the key players: Mountbatten, Stirling & Neave met violent ends?

There are times (frequent) when the Deep State emerges into the open. The near coup in the UK, 9/11 and “Covid-crisis” were just a few of them.

Of course, there is a debate about what exactly constitutes the Deep State but that I shall leave for another time…

As for you: you have taken the political responsibility for one of the worst moments in British history and I don’t envy you for it. Are you responsible for the crimes of the Deep State? Did you know what was going on? Did you condone the actions of your underlings? Were you directly responsible for the appalling crimes against humanity or were you duped?

Should your children survive the “Great Reset” (which is doubtful) they’ll be debating, in much the way Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter do, about the rights and wrongs of your actions. This is a most unhappy state of affairs.

Knowing what I do I’m skeptical whether Aristotle was sincere when he claimed: “Every community aims at some good, and the state, which is the highest community, at the highest good.” What “highest good” could the British state possibly have now? The reduction of its population by 80%, support of the WHO, 5G and digital currency or the active support of Nazis in the Ukraine?

As you know from painful experience: the government isn’t interested in the health of the nation; on the contrary: it’s no accident that so many Britons or Americans are obese: this is all a question of deliberate government policy.[5]

The only sane solution is devolution (it is one of the ironies of history that Nick Clegg fumbled the opportunity of a lifetime), Swiss style, but perhaps even more radical than that.

Real power needs to be exercised at the lowest possible level.

When my mother suggested studying and learning from the Swiss experience she was insultingly called “the Communist from Surbiton”. Sadly, Bernhard Crick didn’t seem to know much about European politics (I doubt whether he knew much about Britain either).

In short, we need a good deal less state (ironically Thatcher’s purported ideals rather than her practices still hold one’s attention), definitely not a “nanny state” and least of all a “super-state” such as the EU, the UN or the WHO[6].  

The irony is that it is you and not I who is much, much closer to the Communist ideal of an all controlling (track and trace) totalitarian state and the joke is: you hardly realise it! And it is I who am the “conservative”, who wishes to preserve the beautiful, the sane and the good against the encroachments of the evil, rapacious and revolutionary Globalists.

But it’s late, I’m weary and I’ll stop pummelling you on account of your political failings for the time being!

Best,

Michael

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[1] p.51 The Complete Yes Minister, Jonathan Lynn & Antony Jay

[2] p.11 Diaries, Alan Clark

[3] p.15 Ibid

[4] p.19 Ibid

[5]

[6] https://off-guardian.org/2023/06/07/who-launches-new-digital-health-initiative/