UK Labour faces a scandal of its own making

LONDON — Fresh from a landslide victory, new U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was keen to pitch his administration as a clean break from the scandal-plagued years of his Tory predecessors.
Addressing journalists in his first press conference as PM on an unseasonably chilly Saturday in early July, Starmer said his government would do things by the book.
The Labour leader had pointedly staged the briefing in No. 10’s state dining room rather than the specially designed room at No. 9, built by the last government and associated with rows about rule-breaking parties during the pandemic.
Starmer had instructed his Cabinet, he told reporters, as to what he expected of them in “terms of standards, delivery and the trust that the country has put in them.”
The same day, he had met with the government’s independent adviser on standards — his party having just won an election on a platform that promised to clean up politics, and to create a new ethics and integrity commission “to ensure probity in government.”
Now, less than two months later, his government finds itself in an ethics scandal of its own making. It faces growing accusations that it is running roughshod over standards to parachute loyalists into Britain’s civil service, which unlike its American counterpart is required to be impartial.
There have been the appointments — both revealed by POLITICO — of Emily Middleton and Ian Corfield to senior rungs of the civil service, despite both having worked for the Labour Party in opposition and having been involved in donating to party figures (Corfield personally, and Middleton via her employer). 
POLITICO also revealed that the Treasury had failed to notify the Civil Service Commission watchdog about Corfield’s donations. He has since stepped down from his civil service role and will now take on an unpaid, temporary adviser role, the Sunday Times reported.
The same paper also revealed on Sunday that Starmer’s biggest personal donor, TV mogul Waheed Alli, had been given a pass to No. 10 — a highly unusual perk for anyone who is not a direct adviser or a civil servant. The government insisted the pass was only temporary.
Then there was the revelation by the news site Guido Fawkes that Jess Sargeant had been shuffled to a top civil service role from Labour Together, the Starmerite think tank that also groomed Middleton for government and which made donations to Sargeant’s current boss, Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds. 
A government spokesperson declined to directly address charges that the appointments risk the impartiality of the civil service, but noted that exemptions are permitted for direct appointments and said there was a precedent for such hires. “We do not comment on individual staffing appointments,” the person added.
The government has appointed party loyalists to junior civil service roles within No. 10 as well, in one case replacing a veteran civil servant who had served four prime ministers as diary manager with Annie-Rose Peterman, a Labour staffer who had worked in Starmer’s team in opposition, POLITICO revealed Wednesday.
Starmer’s deputy PM, Angela Rayner, has also brought one of her policy advisers — Haydon Etherington — into a civil service role, the Daily Mail reported, while his chief of staff, Sue Gray, has hired former Labour aide Mitchell Burns-Jackson as a Whitehall executive assistant to her private office, POLITICO confirmed after Guido broke the news.  
Some of these roles may be junior, but they offer access to some of the most powerful people in Britain — and to their whereabouts — and experts say it’s unusual for party officials to get such positions, which are usually reserved for civil-service lifers. 
The government spokesperson quoted above stressed that Peterman and Burns-Jackson are very junior-grade administrative roles.
Government spinners also insist most of the appointments have been done via a legitimate “exceptions” process and are on fixed-term contracts.
In an interview with the BBC Wednesday, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones said the grumbling about the hires was a case of the opposition Conservatives seeking to make a “political issue” of the situation.
Some senior Tories even waded in on behalf of the Labour government — former Chancellor George Osborne told Conservative critics to “pipe down,” arguing — before Corfield switched role — that the banker would help attract investment to the U.K. and better connect the Labour government to finance.
But the uproar is now spreading to less partisan quarters.
Establishment paper the Times, which tends to keep a neutral line on Starmer’s leadership, accused the Labour government of operating a “chumocracy” in its leader Wednesday.  
On Thursday, the usually straight-laced Institute for Government (IfG) weighed in with an scathing article arguing the appointments presented “risks to the impartiality of the civil service.”
“It undermines the principle of merit — core to an impartial civil service — if ministers appear to freely give jobs to political allies without fair and open competition. The exceptions process should be just that — exceptional. It should not be a backdoor for political appointments,” wrote Hannah White of the IfG.
White said the government should have appointed politically aligned outsiders as special advisers (SpAds) or policy advisers (pads) — political appointees who have become a standard feature of British government over the decades. 
“The government … has made an early mistake by attempting to side-step established recruitment practices,” said White, who less than two months ago had written how “enormously welcome” Starmer’s early pitch on ethics was.
Why the government didn’t go down this more tried-and-tested route is subject to speculation in the corridors of Whitehall. (The IfG’s blog suggested ministers may be seeking workarounds after being limited in the number of SpAd and pad appointments they could make.) 
Evidence is growing that limits placed on political appointments are causing problems. The government is shrinking — if not scrapping entirely — pad roles across government, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss their direct knowledge of internal government affairs. 
POLITICO spoke to four Whitehall insiders who said there was widespread disquiet over the appointment of former Labour officials to civil servant roles. They were granted anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly. 
“I really cannot see how a Labour donor can possibly be fairly considered ‘impartial’,” said one referring to the Corfield appointment.
Another said it set a dangerous precedent that future governments might follow. “Are we just becoming like the American system? If they want to put Labour people all across the civil service then they should make the case for it. Trying to do it on the sly sows distrust,” they said, referring to the overtly political civil service in the U.S.
“The new government rightly reset relationships with the civil service, and committed to build confidence in ethical standards,” said Alex Thomas of the IfG.
“But this row shows that there are better, more tried-and-tested ways of bringing in political allies than appointing them to core civil service roles.”
Away from the political appointments, the government’s seeming willingness to cut corners on standards to fill top civil service roles elsewhere has also raised eyebrows. Clara Swinson, a director general in the health department, is being lined up to lead the government’s delivery unit as a second permanent secretary within the Cabinet Office, POLITICO revealed last week.
It would be a promotion for the career civil servant to one of the biggest jobs in government — delivering Labour’s fabled “five missions” — that technically requires an open recruitment process. But the government advertised the role only after we had already been tipped off about the appointment. Even then they advertised the role internally (governments are supposed to advertise senior civil service roles externally “by default” unless a minister signs off on doing it otherwise), and gave candidates just five days to apply. 
“I don’t know what they think they are playing at,” the first Whitehall insider quoted above said.