Heywood

Jeremy Heywood spent most of his work life in the civil service, where he had a stellar career. Ending at the very top of his profession – but tragically dying of lung cancer at the age of 56. This book is the story of the last thirty years of his working life, rounded out by some material about what was left of his private life, as told by his wife. At around 500 pages, about normal for a political memoir, but unusually readable. I got on pretty well for the first two thirds, but started to flag a bit after that under the accumulated weight of first names of people, all kinds of transient emergencies and some stuff which really was of national importance.

This being the closing post, with previous posts at references 5, 6 and 7. Good evidence of my engagement with the book!

Of particular interest to me, as his time at the Treasury overlapped with my own – in, I hasten to add, a relatively humble position, helping to mind the computers – and I had heard of many of the people who appear in the book and even met some of them. I can even claim to have been present at one or two meetings at which the man himself was also present – at a time when he was a very public smoker, something which by that time had become unusual, at least in civil service offices.

A view from the world of private secretaries, private offices and the more or less the behind the scenes advisors and fixers for very senior politicians. A fairly closed world which, no doubt, sometimes gets a bit carried away with its own importance. With Heywood perhaps being more visible than most because he served for so long, serving both Chancellors and Prime Ministers, both Labour and Conservative. He managed to work for four Prime Ministers: Blair, Brown, Cameron and May – before retiring in October 2018 – quite possibly a record. May resigned the following summer, following the failure of her Brexit policy.

A record of the huge amount of pushing and shoving in the higher reaches, particularly between No.10 and the Treasury. Lots of big egos around. So a lot of Heywood’s time seemed to be spent trying to broker deals on tricky issues that enough people would sign up to. He must have been able to consume policy and paper at a prodigious rate.

A rather febrile existence. Always living on the end of one’s mobile phone. A rather disturbed private life. Always living on the edge of the wave, always rushing from one panic to another, from one policy fad to another. While at the same time being a servant, a facilitator rather than a principal.

I was left wondering whether all this frantic rushing about is really the best way to run things at the top of the pyramid; a far cry from the more gentlemanly and leisurely ways of the top of the pyramid as portrayed by, for example, Trollope, another senior civil servant in his first career. But then I think Trollope had something of a soft spot for the gentlemanly and leisurely classes, often giving adventurers and parvenus a hard time. He also had a fair seat on a fox hunting horse.

Oddments

Working relations between Brown and Blair were pretty dreadful. And those between Brown and his Chancellor, Darling, were not much better. Which pair reminds me that there will be no big jobs any more for the Scots if they decide to cast off. Local government will be as far as it goes. Which reminds of how the current difficulties between Salmon and Sturgeon hark back to the bad old days when Glasgow was a Labour fief – and a big part of the rot which let the Nationalists in. Rostov-on-Don one of their twin towns. Council presently hung, with SNP in in the lead.

Brown was, on occasion, very good at speeches. A lot of his policy making seemed to take place in the margins of writing them. Done, I believe, with an overhead projector from his PC with two or three helpers. Said to be rather heavy on the keyboard, probably reflecting years of hammering away on a Remington.

A great deal of micro management, not to say manipulation, of people, paper and facilities went into the important G20 meeting in London, at the height of the financial crisis at the turn of 2008/2009. Some of which might be thought to be have been sailing a bit close to the wind – but from which Brown emerges with credit – at least for his handling of the crisis, if not for his lack of foresight of same. Along with almost everybody else.

A No.10 advisor – a trusted Brown aide – was caught in the spring of 2009 creating fake news about the sexual and other peccadillos of a Conservative MP. At least he had gone by the evening of the same day. 

At one point, Heywood was roped into buying supplies of salt. People such as Heywood seem to get dragged into panic attacks on all kinds of problems about which they have little or no prior knowledge. Is this really a good way to run things? But I also associated to a remark in a book about the battle of Waterloo – possibly by White-Spunner, previously noticed at reference 8 – about how senior officers, even the commander in chief, sometimes have to get stuck into a bit of micro management, in this case to get a near-broken battalion back into the line.

In 2012, the Conservatives blocked a plan to reform the House of Lords, making it smaller and elective, more like the upper houses of other countries. Their Liberal coalition partners were very angry about this.

Senior people have been worrying about the nonsense of our buying two whopping great aircraft carriers since at least 2012. But that was not enough to stop it. Time will tell whether we get anything back on the investment – but my guess is not much. Will they be taken out by drones from some rag-tag army, somewhere far from home?

At one point, a chap called Rohan Silva, an advisor drawn in from the City, suggested breaking EU labour laws in order to make our labour market more flexible, presumably code for making employment more precarious. So our fat leader is by no means the first leading Conservative to go in for that sort of thing. Sternly taken to task by a piece in today’s FT about how middle sized countries like ours depend on respect for international law. Our only defence against bullying by big countries.

I was reminded about how Nick Clegg, having been trashed by his voters for supping with the devil (as it were), then joined Facebook as Vice-president of Global Affairs and Communications. He earns getting on for £3m a year, but he is almost invisible on the Facebook corporate website and he is not in the top tier of 18 people, of whom 5 were females and 2 were people of colour, one of the two being a female. But Google does turn up a piece of his written on the 24th February about Australian news: an effective puff for the Facebook position.

Conclusions

A good read. It was good to be reminded of how we do things at the top – and it would be good if I could find something as accessible about things at the top elsewhere.

PS: is there any significance in the fact that both the aforementioned Scottish leaders are named for large fishes?

References

Reference 1: What does Jeremy think – Suzanne Heywood – 2021.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Heywood. 

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Heywood. 

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/its-not-so-easy.html. Relevant in the sense that people like Heywood seemed to spend a lot of time concocting important and expensive schemes on the backs of envelopes in the middle of the night.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/ten-years-ago.html. A post about the warning about pandemic published in the 2010 security review.

Reference 6: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/biobank.html. A post about an initiative which Heywood was keen on.

Reference 7: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/03/subprime-business-as-usual.html. A post about one of his pals – presently in the news for bad reasons.

Reference 8: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/03/waterloo.html. Notice of Waterloo.

Reference 9: François Leclerc du Tremblay - Jean-Léon Gérôme - 1873. The original éminence grise. But one should remember that France was a more important country then than the UK is now.

Reference 10: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-eminence.html. Someone else who aspired to eminence, but who didn't stay the course.