A Rather English Dissident

I appear to have been unbanned from government. Though it is hard to tell.

For there was never formal confirmation I was blacklisted, notwithstanding several individuals in a position to know assuring me this was the case. Then again, others denied such an allegation.

Equally, just one invite to a post-election briefing meeting of analyst types like me may have been a mistake or a coincidence. Were it not the first I’ve received from any department since leaving government six years and three months ago.

What exactly I did to be placed in my involuntary exile also remains unclear. Criticism of the UK’s approach in my fields of Brexit and trade policy hardly set me apart from many others.

One friendly insider told me there was a suspicion I would leak secrets and therefore a junior official had been assigned to check my tweets. Honestly, what a terrible task to give to anyone, though presumably nothing was found.

Another suggested it was because I had regular conversations with Labour Party folk though these only started in 2020. Then a fellow member of the UK policy twitter circle suggested that former colleagues of mine were jealous of my public profile after leaving. Maybe all of these reasons together or something completely different.

Who was responsible, well that too I don’t know. Though I am intensely proud of being blocked by Liz Truss on twitter, my outcast status predated and indeed post-dated her time as Trade Secretary or Prime Minister. Maybe a senior official thought this was the right thing to do to deliver Ministerial wishes? Or perhaps it came from one of the ersatz experts who would happily trash basic economic tenets to gain access in the name of the pure Brexit and buccaneering ‘Global Britain’?

Whatever the origins, identifying my outcast status wasn’t too hard to guess. Quite aside from never being invited to regular briefings, there was also the conspicuous lack of opportunity to be on the same panel as any senior officials, ministers, or staunch Brexit supporters. Approximately two snuck through in six years, both to the evident slight embarrassment of the other individuals involved. In a field rather thin of real specialists.

Then there was apparently the meeting between a UK official and an ECIPE colleague in which it was suggested I was making too much trouble. Given that think-tanks often struggle for profile, this was unfortunately for government somewhat misheard as a good thing for me to be doing.

This was the slightly more sinister side of blacklisting, as perhaps was the senior official asking questions to former colleagues about my financial arrangements. Some businesses who would work with me were probably put off doing so by a word or reputation.

Do they still have restraint of trade? In any case I’m grateful to those who refused to play those games inside and outside government, and stand ready to work with everyone because it really is time to move on. And who knows, maybe one of my furtive meetings with senior officials was actually with the person responsible?

In any case, what my lack of access largely did not affect was knowing UK policy positions. Those secrets that EU and FTA negotiators were desperate to protect turned out to be somewhat easy to guess for specialists, and if I could do it no wonder the EU and others likewise.

That is, if I wasn’t meeting some of those giving and receiving briefings for drinks, or on one lovely occasion if the government wasn’t talking to increasingly angry stakeholders interspersed throughout the WTO atrium during a public event. That call didn’t stay secret for too long.

One of the EU negotiators later told an ECIPE colleague that they had really appreciated my analysis of UK negotiating positions. Ironically of course since I probably wouldn’t have felt at so much liberty to share if I’d actually been briefed on them.

So it wasn’t clear what the government achieved through making me persona non grata. I on the other hand gained a lot of time and increasingly credibility for obviously having had nothing to do with the Brexit or Global Britain shambles.

In some ways I’ll miss the days of dissidence. Not least because presumably I will now be invited to lots of meetings and briefings telling me what I previously might have guessed. A Labour frontbencher once asked me how I had so much time to tweet, and my best answer was the absence of such commitments.

Beyond that, who wouldn’t have their ego slightly expanded by hearing that secretly new UK trade officials were told to follow me and a couple of others on twitter to find out what was really going on? Moreover, that apparently one of several aborted efforts to produce a trade strategy came because I was making too much of a fuss on twitter that the UK government was negotiating deals without actual rationale.

Well, those warnings weren’t heard and the Australia FTA became the cause of controversy that needn’t have been the case, leading to virtual denunciation by Prime Minister Sunak. In the mean-time there seemed to be occasions on which I was practically the only UK national allowed to meet the European Commission, not to mention having the sorts of contacts with Member States that UK negotiators would have loved.

Before the paranoia of post-2016 government, the civil service did of course know that it was silly to bar critics like the one I became. Quite the opposite. Trouble makers got all the invites, the more the merrier to keep them busy and quiet. Same reason as why more sophisticated negotiators started sharing details of trade negotiations, because it is the secrecy not the content that is the juicy part. Lessons of modern trade policy that I hope the UK can now properly put into operation.

Quite likely indeed that I actually had more influence by being blacklisted than I ever would otherwise as a humble think-tanker and stakeholder, if more on public opinion than the work of government. More so when it turned out that there was quite the club of people banned by different departments for nothing very much. This apparently included a couple of other trade folk whose crime appeared to be knowing too much of the subject.

Not that I ever wanted to follow others in demanding the files being kept on me inside government. That would have been just as much of a distraction, and I’m busy enough as it is. Besides, I prefer the idle speculation of this article than the cold hard realities I may otherwise find. I bear little malice.

In truth, the blacklisting seemed to be weakening in this last two years. Serving as an advisor to a House of Lords Committee where some members seemed surprised not to discover a revolutionary probably helped. In turn being able to access the truly insider gossip of members was simultaneously delightful, insightful, and most definitely not to be shared publicly.

While I appear to have survived and possibly thrived, happy for everyone to know I was blacklisted by a truly hopeless government, there’s no reason to be complacent. Secrecy and cover-ups in the UK public sector have led to scandals, and careers have been ruined. My good fortune was to be on the wrong side of a fairly hapless version.

Then again, I never set out to be a dissident, and am slightly relieved that when it happened it was this rather English version. Though I won’t always enjoy the renewed access, it probably will be a better life, and less blacklisting will make for better government overall.