In 1945 George S Patton was, for the second time, removed from his post. The first was for slapping a soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in Sicily; the second was as military governor of Bavaria for a string of impolitic remarks — including that he didn’t agree with “this denazification thing” — that were mostly the result of clashes over strategy towards both the defeated Germans and allied Russians.

In late 1944 and early 1945 it was agreed that the Allied demarcation line was to be at the Elbe River. But Patton — along with Montgomery and Churchill — believed that the line should be drawn further east, at either Berlin or the Polish Border. The decision to draw the line further west was, in large part, due to American fears of huge casualties in taking Berlin, and contentment at the idea of letting the Russians do whatever heavy lifting that remained in the European theatre. 

Patton strongly believed that the Allies were making a grave error by not advancing to Berlin and securing all of Germany under Anglo-American control. The Allies had fought World War II, in part, to liberate Eastern Europe from Hitler’s totalitarian grip. Yet now that Hitler was about to be defeated, their policies were effectively ensuring that Eastern Europe would fall under the equally oppressive rule of Stalin.

Patton recognized the emerging contours of the next — cold — war earlier than any other American. A strident anti-communist, he understood that the friend/enemy distinction between Germans and Russians would have to be reversed. He argued that German forces — who were fleeing westwards to surrender to Allied forces in huge numbers — shouldn’t be disarmed, but used as the foundation of a rearmed Wehrmacht in order to counterbalance the Soviets, who held a significant advantage in land forces across Europe.

In the spirit of politically advantageous alliances with former enemies, let me say this; I stand with Keir Starmer.

… my new and faithful friend is an essential ally in the fight against an enemy of far greater danger

Last week, Starmer made a speech suggesting civil servants are partly to blame for blocking reform in public service, and that “Too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline.” Civil servants are outraged; the head of the senior civil servants’ union has written a letter to the PM in condemnation of his “Trumpian” comments. One told Robert Peston that “There is a mood that we should pull the plug on him”. The fronts are moving; my new and faithful friend is an essential ally in the fight against an enemy of far greater danger.

Starmer is right to be worried about Whitehall. It has been a running sore for Prime Minister for years; in the 1960s, Harold Wilson expressed frustration over the dominance of Oxbridge elites. Two decades later, Margaret Thatcher’s “agencification” of government was a way to break up the temporary alliance of ministers and civil servants to block her reforms. Tony Blair, in 1999, spoke of the “scars on his back” from battles with bureaucracy, while David Cameron labelled the Civil Service as “the enemies of enterprise” in 2011. Dominic Cummings famously promised a “hard rain” as he launched a shake up the service in 2020.

Since Brexit, the situation has become even more dire, with passive resistance escalating into open revolt

They are all entirely right. And as each PM passes, the case for reform becomes more and more urgent, the situation increasingly untenable. Since Brexit, the situation has become even more dire, with passive resistance escalating into open revolt. Two years ago, the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union — which represents almost 16,000 staff across different Home Office departments and Border Force — joined legal action against the Rwanda deal, and threatened strikes should the case fail. 

As I wrote at the time, this resulted in a ludicrous situation in which a Union representing government employees was “taking the government to court in order to find government policy illegal, thereby preventing government employees charged with implementing government policy from having to implement government policy, and then threatening to strike in order to prevent that government policy being implemented regardless of the outcome.”

The unwillingness of the Civil Service to enact Conservative policies would have been markedly more palatable had it also provided basic and competent government. But let me ask you this; do you feel like the state has been providing basic and competent government?

We have the highest rate of public spending since the 1970s, the highest tax burden since the Second World War but nothing feels like it works, and most of us agree that the basic services we rely on everyday — which provide the state with basic legitimacy — are getting worse. Apropos of nothing, public sector productivity has barely improved in my lifetime; in fact, the latest estimates suggest productivity was about 5 per cent lower in 2023 than in 1997. 

Progress this poor, except in its cost, cannot be allowed to continue. Part of Starmer’s problem was that he, and everyone around him, assumed that the only problem with government was that it was being run by Tories. But after realising so quickly the shackles Whitehall places on a democratically elected government, Starmer has become a useful ally. If he attempts it, he will undoubtedly get civil service reform wrong — but there is now cross-party consensus that the civil service needs reform. That makes forcing reform on the Civil Service much easier.

We have time to fight it out with Labour. But once we beat him, we will still have to beat the Civil Service. We should, therefore, be right behind Starmer in this fight; like Patton, we should be looking to the contours of the next war. Patton’s view on Germany was initially unpopular, but he was soon vindicated; Germany was re-militarised by 1955 and bought into NATO. In a well-known exchange, Eisenhower questioned Patton’s request to advance eastward immediately, asking, “What on earth for?” Without missing a beat, Patton replied, “You shouldn’t need to ask that, Ike. History will provide the answer.” And so it did.