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Wild spending on Brexit preparations makes good political theatre, but it won’t protect us from the impact of no deal• The civil servant works in a Whitehall department and is part of Operation Yellowhammer
The many thousands of civil servants who, like me, work on no-deal Brexit preparations know that Twitter is increasingly a more reliable guide to what’s about to go down than anything our bamboozled civil service bosses pass on to us. This is partly the result of a prime minister whose showmanship has turned zombie and started gorging itself on our institutions, and partly the result of the fact that we just can’t seem to get enough of it. The conventions of political theatre – not proper risk management – are now ensorcelling hundreds more staff into Operation Yellowhammer, the government’s planning for a no-deal Brexit, as Michael Gove so portentously announced to Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
The official reason we are given for this new phase is that the UK, thanks to its self-hating parliament, can’t be sure that the EU will grant a Brexit extension, thus making no deal more likely. But the real reason, of course, is to help to terrify craven MPs into voting for the deal by carrying out a pre-Halloween dress rehearsal of what no deal will actually feel like. Continue reading...