This is superb reporting, but a piece is missing, which makes the tone wrong. If you create an atmosphere in which civil servants are traduced, aides are summarily dismissed for disagreeing, where you administer punishment beatings, even to the Chancellor, this is what you get. https://twitter.com/duncanweldon/status/1247614477249515521

That’s not a side issue. Not a context point. It is the heart of the matter. If the environment you create is, by design, one of paranoia and Pavlovian compliance, it’s very difficult to then flip a switch on an entire staff’s mentality, when you need them to be brave and honest.

It’s difficult to convince people who were employed or conditioned to say only “yes” that it’s ok to say “no”. To convey that “THIS is different; we’re not going to destroy your life by briefing against you to every paper, because you advised against a thing we wanted to do.”