The Secret Civil Servant on Scot Gov meltdowns and weathering storms

In fact, it’s been a tough few years. We’d already been burnt out by Brexit, the pandemic, ferries, the Salmond inquiry, Brexit again, ferries again, the pandemic again (and again), the cost of living crisis, and the twin constitutional stooshies of indyref2 and gender recognition reform. Round and round we went. First as tragedy, then as farce.  

Then we had the sudden and seismic replacement of Nicola Sturgeon, the mebbe-definitely-unrelated political earthquake associated with a certain P. Murrell of Glasgow, and a spiralling slo-mo governance collapse that threatens to make Colin from Accounts look like Les Miserables.  

Speaking of which, to those of us toiling inside the machinery of government, the clusterbourach carousel seems to be speeding up. Truth be told, civil servants are starting to feel a bit woozy, and for three reasons. 

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First, most civil servants have never experienced this kind of chaos. Auntie Nicola was top dog for almost a decade. Like her or loathe her (and most of us liked her), she brought the kind of stability to the business of government that our English cousins could only fantasise about. That stability has now vanished into a fog that our nervy new political bosses are still stumbling out of, while we press hastily bolted-together briefing packs into clammy Ministerial hands that aren’t quite as keen to get hold of the levers of government as they were before everything went a wee bit Silent Witness. It’s been a disorientating experience all round. 

Second, while nobody could argue with the new FM’s worthy aims of tackling poverty, rebuilding the economy and improving public services, the lengthening list of policy delays or reversals is making us feel a bit wabbit. Take the controversial deposit return scheme: that particular can has been firmly booted into touch. Plans to restrict alcohol advertising have also been watered down. And the ailing plans for a National Care Service now won’t get a Parliamentary vote until after the summer.  

The actual delivery of those policy promises, and many more besides, may have slowed, but it surely hasn’t stopped. I don’t know anyone who’d agree with LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton's claim that the government is in "total paralysis".  It isn’t. But, while the civil service WhatsApp chat is that Mr Yousaf is a decent guy and hopefully won’t turn out to be a single-use FM, many of us increasingly feel like we’re on a shoogly peg.  

Thirdly, and sadly, we ain’t as anonymous as we used to be. Consider Jason Leitch (above). I’m old enough to remember when only the nation's most maniacal pub quizzers could be relied on to cough up the identity of any Scottish Government senior civil servant. Yet our National Clinical Director became a household name to the point of being trolled for being a ‘fame-hungry wee man’, and still boasts the kind of Twitter following that would have most Cabinet Secretaries screaming into their pillow.  

But worryingly, we’ve also witnessed former Scottish Government chief Leslie Evans, her successor John-Paul Marks and, the other week, current external affairs director-general Ken Thomson being publicly dingied in a way that would have been properly unthinkable a few years ago. Thanks partly to the trail blazed by yon incel witch-doctor Dominic Cummings, these days you’re now also more likely to know the names of Scottish Government special advisers – Liz Lloyd, take a bow. Add to all that the reignition of new right-wing fury about ’activist’ civil servants, and you don’t need to be J.K. Rowling to imagine a world where more and more of us get expelliarmussed in public. 

Why then, am I risking my job to write about this stuff? Because public interest in what the civil service is doing with your hard-earned dosh is rising. Witness the recent loss of public confidence, according to recent polling data, in Scottish Government performance – particularly on health and education (see also The Secret Teacher). 

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There’s also a growing – and worrisome – clamour around the possibility that the Scottish civil service is being politicised, from allegedly being force-fed gender critical ideology, to the suggestion of a ‘pro-SNP culture’ among government workers, as well as recent claims from Douglas Ross and others that civil servants have been wasting money on the case for independence.  

All in all, this feels like a good time to brief you about life inside this particular carousel, not from the viewpoint of the politicians, political journos or special advisers atop their gilded ponies, but from the haunted boiler room of the Scottish Government’s civil service.  

Of course, you’d be entitled to treat anything I write here with enough salt to choke a rhino. After all, the Civil Service Code has long required that civil servants like yours truly to keep their heads down while Scottish Ministers publicly deal with whatever brickbats and plaudits there may be. To be clear, reader, that’s the same set of rules which absolutely forbids civil servants writing newspaper articles like this one. See, you’re not supposed to know what civil servants think, any more than you’re supposed to know how Lorne sausage is made, or how Frankie Boyle comes up with his material. Ignorance is bliss. 

To be clear, I will be spilling some tea. But there’s a limit, which is why future editions of this column won’t be grinding axes, leaking secrets, slagging off Ministers (much) or revealing who’s been shagging who in the disabled loos at Atlantic Quay or St Andrew’s House (a preposterous notion in any case: most of us are still working from home). 

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Your friendly neighbourhood anonymous civil servant plans instead to write about slightly more serious stuff. For example, how we feel about our role in helping Ministers deliver on their arguably-flagging ambitions for independence, the incipient menace of ‘wokeness’ in the civil service, the terrifying black hole in our budgets, strikes, and our complicated relationship with Ministers. If I’m feeling up to it, I might explore why Scottish Government civil servants – according to official data on sick absence – seem to be sicker than almost any other part of the UK Civil Service.  

Finally, it will be hard not to tear into the subject of bullying and harassment, following last week’s email from the afore-mentioned Mr Marks to every @scotgov civil servant, in which he acknowledged the Raab shitshow before going on to ‘reaffirm our commitment to kindness’ and to ‘underline our position that bullying and harassment will not be tolerated’. We will see. 

But the real question may be a simpler one: as Scottish Ministers grapple with the social, cultural, constitutional and economic storms battering the country, will reality keep up with the rhetoric?   

Watch this space. 

The Secret Civil Servant (@secretcivilscot) works for the Scottish Government. All fees from this series are donated to The Trussell Trust.