Sue Cameron: The lessons of Brexit and Chilcot are the same – we must stop putting politics above good government

A lack of planning, a breakdown of cabinet government, the sidelining of civil service advice – the parallels between the Iraq debacle and the aftermath of the Brexit vote are striking, argues Sue Cameron


By Sue Cameron

25 Jul 2016

For both sides in the Brexit debate, and in the run-up to the Iraq war, what mattered was a political win. Image: iStock

Never has the clash between the needs of politics and good government been so apparent. Two examples, the Iraq war and the Brexit vote, have dominated the summer. And despite the glib assurances about lessons being learned, the mistakes in both are uncannily the same – witness Sir John Chilcot's long awaited report on Iraq.

Perhaps it should be renamed the Brexcot report and Sir John congratulated on his dual-use findings. In so many particulars, his analysis of what went wrong in Iraq also applies to Brexit. There was the same lack of planning, the same breakdown of cabinet government, the same sidelining of the senior civil service and the same failure to challenge policy assumptions. 

In both cases, questions have been raised about the legal position. And let us not forget the most striking similarity of all: the same sexing-up of the evidence and the same misleading claims, if not downright lies, by politicians – politicians on both sides in the referendum campaign.


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For example, Sir John says: "Judgements about the severity of the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were presented with a certainty that was not justified". The same is true of the Leave campaign's claims about Brexit giving us £350m a week to spend on the health service. 

It is equally true of the Remain camp's assertions about the impact of Brexit on family finances. Nobody can say with any certainty what incomes will be in 15 years' time, let alone predict to the narest £100 how much larger or smaller they will be. 

Or take Sir John's statement that "the planning and preparation for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate". The same is true of Brexit except that the planning and preparation for a Leave vote were not so much inadequate as non-existent. 

Other lessons cited by Chilcot include "the importance of collective ministerial discussion which encourages frank and informed debate and challenge" and "the need to assess risks, weigh options and set an achievable and realistic strategy".

"It was hard for the voice of quiet reason to make itself heard against the shouting of political slogans"

Admittedly, the cabinet was split over Brexit – but then so it was over the Iraq war. And while there was a political case for taking the unusual step of giving Eurosceptic ministers the freedom to campaign for Brexit, surely there should have been some agreement first in cabinet on the parameters of the public debate, the risks, the options and the realistic, albeit differing, strategies. Instead, the voters were left floundering, crying out for "facts" while their leaders indulged in political gamesmanship.

For both sides in the Brexit debate and for Blair trying to secure agreement to go to war, what mattered was a political win. If that required embroidering the evidence here or a dose of scaremongering there then so be it – and never mind the practical consequences.

During the referendum campaign, heroic efforts to fact-check the politicians were made by organisations like Full Fact and UK in a Changing Europe. Yet it was hard for the voice of quiet reason to make itself heard against the shouting of political slogans.

So would it have helped if the civil service had played a role in laying the ground rules and putting a fuller, fairer picture into the public domain?

"Yes" is the obvious answer but even if they were willing to do so – and officials are acutely aware that nobody has elected them – they were hobbled. In the case of Iraq, they were all too often sidelined by Blair. In the case of Brexit, civil servants couldn't even get on the starting blocks and not just because prime minister David Cameron had banned any contingency planning. 

In a general election, officials pore over party manifestos and meet opposition leaders to discuss their policy plans. Whitehall can then swing into action the minute a new government is in place. With the EU referendum, civil servants didn't know who their ministers would be in the event of a Leave vote. Worse, the politicians couldn't agree among themselves on an EU exit policy and seemed not to have even discussed it.

There must now be a powerful case for the civil service to take a more independent role in policy making – independent, that is, from the government of the day. Their main role will always be to serve ministers and policy recommendations should continue to be for the eyes of their political masters only. 

But Whitehall should also put far more "advice" into the public domain in terms of factual information, policy options and, most important, the likely constraints on decision-making. It would be one way of keeping the politicians honest – or at least, less dishonest. It could also help to make the public better consumers of politics.  

Many voters regard politicians as untrustworthy and incompetent. Sometimes they are right. But they need support in asking the right questions so that they can more easily distinguish between good guys and the mountebanks. Voters also need to understand that government is difficult – good government that is. Bad government is easy. That's why we have so much of it.

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