Bathgate is a small town in West Lothian. It’s one of those that’s not really known for one big thing. The world's oldest known reptile fossil, Westlothiana lizziae, was discovered in a local quarry. It’s had steel making, quarries, car plants and even mobile phone factories. Most are long gone. Its famous former sons and daughters include motorsport’s Paul Di Resta and Dario Franchitti; it was even home to Hollywood’s Isla Fisher in her youth. But it’s not got a “coals to Newcastle” or “sent to Coventry” ring to it. That was until last week and "Tepid Bathgate". Forever now this town will be associated with the prime minister and his cackhanded attempt to sound innovative whilst embracing the language of Reform, rather than reform.
And it wasn’t just the PM's language. The “tepid bath” line could just about have been forgiven if it was an aberration. You can imagine the speech writers coming up with that and being quite pleased with themselves. No one knows what it actually means, other than it’s an insult and quite memorable. Prime ministers have to play to many audiences in a speech and sometimes they get it wrong. Yes, they are the minister for the civil service, but they also need to get elected. A misstep can be forgiven, but the speech was accompanied by a briefing and then even after there was the reaction to the speech, the briefing continued. “Cummings was right” is, I feel, one that may come back to haunt them.
I remain unclear what exactly the prime minister was trying to achieve with that bit of his speech. What I’m clearer about is what he did achieve. I’m no stranger to outrage at what ministers say publicly about the civil service and how counterproductive and destructive that can be, yet I was genuinely astonished at those lines. I read and re-read them in disbelief. Embracing the Trumpian “I’m not saying we need to drain the swamp, but…”, however qualified, was not a mistake. If I said to a minister “I’m not saying you couldn’t make decisions quickly in a month of Sundays, but…” I’m not sure I’d get away with the fake outrage I’ve witnessed over the last few days as they clutch their pearls in horror at the Trumpian accusation.
His use of that language, qualified with “but”, was intended to suggest there was some merit in that sentiment, not least because it was then followed by “there are too many in Whitehall who are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”. It still jars, to be honest, as I type. I wonder if it’s in part because people expected better; mainly because he and his ministers said they’d be better. We’d all become acclimatised to the strategy from the last government, however distasteful, and were therefore never surprised – just disappointed – when they repeated it.
Whatever the intent, I don’t think they fully understand the damage it has done. Starmer has undermined the leadership of the civil service in the very week that he appointed a new cabinet secretary and head of the civil service. People want their leaders to come in to bat for them when unfairly criticised; impossible for a cabinet secretary when it’s the prime minister doing the criticising.
"The irony is, the bits of his speech where Starmer talked about what he wants to get done are all the more difficult if you denigrate and insult the people you are tasking with delivering it"
In a week when the current cabinet secretary, Simon Case, gave a speech celebrating the values of public service through eight examples of brilliant civil servants, from Porton Down to jobcentres, the prime minister could have celebrated the incredible work of the civil service in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. He could then have gone on to challenge it with embracing innovation and reform. But he didn’t. And the irony is, the bits of his speech where he talked about what he wants to get done are all the more difficult if you denigrate and insult the people you are tasking with delivering it. It’s the difference between governing and campaigning.
Civil servants are hungry for reform. They want to do better and are frustrated by lack of resources, strategy, stable political leadership and, of course, mind-numbing bureaucracy at times. They want to get on with making people’s lives better and often they do, but the answer why sometimes they can’t is complex. It requires complex solutions. I get the “start-up” language being used as shorthand by Pat McFadden, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in his speech on reforming public services yesterday and he did recognise that civil servants want to deliver better public services, but government isn’t a “start up”. Those who deliver those services are not singularly in control of them.
I once sat with a civil service leader who described how they’d been trying to get ministers to buy in to a reform proposal. Not controversial, but complex. It had taken a year to get a minister interested and then Sunak came in and the minister was gone, so it had taken another year to get the next minister up to speed. Then as I sat having lunch with them, their minister was reshuffled again. That’s without exploring the consequences of underfunding and underpaying for over a decade or the consequences of Brexit and Covid.
Government, as I said in my letter to the prime minister, has to be a joint enterprise between ministers and civil servants, built on trust and partnership if it is to succeed. "Tepid Bathgate" needs fixing, and quickly, not just for the poor citizens of that small West Lothian town.
Dave Penman is general secretary of the FDA union