Greensill is merely the latest chapter in a long story of distorted decision-making and falling public trust
Spare a thought for Britain’s ministers and mandarins. Making the right call in the public interest isn’t always easy when they’re endlessly having their ears bent by those with vested interests in their decisions. It is, however, their duty. But it’s one that has been compromised by public service becoming, for too many, just one part of a career in which acquiring the kind of wealth available only beyond Whitehall is a key objective.
This week’s revelation that, for a couple of months in 2015, the government’s chief commercial officer was also working for supply chain finance company Greensill Capital was called “extraordinary and shocking” by the shadow Cabinet Office minister, Rachel Reeves. Yet as part of a culture in which gliding from a position of public responsibility into one of private gain is now the norm, the overlap in roles looks no more than a curiosity. The dual role had been approved by a Cabinet Office at the top of which sat the late cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood.
