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The government makes the rules. If they want to fire civil servants, they can give themselves the power to do it.
In theory, yes. In practice, I can't recommend highly enough that you watch Yes, Minister. There was a post about it here not too long ago. It's utterly brilliant. You will laugh a lot. You will have a joyous time watching it. It will be the highlight of your year.
I'm a huge fan of Yes Minister and frequently refer to it as my favourite documentary. It's extremely true to life.
Nonetheless, the power of the civil service lies in manipulation and persuasion. It's not actual power. They thrive with governments that are directionless, cowardly, and unresolved - which is most of them. But when the voters clearly want something and the government is determined to give it to them, in the end the civil service must meekly say - Yes, Minister.
Brexit actually happened, after all, despite the many attempts to sabotage it.
I think you lost the thread of this conversation. We're talking about the civil service deciding to prosecute someone who they view as a major political opponent. They're trying to put their political opponent in a cage and strip his name off the ballot. If accomplished, that is actual power.
Not only was the British bureaucracy caught with their pants down on Brexit the way the American bureaucracy was caught in 2016 (they thought it was already so unlikely to go through with the regular measures that there was no need to pull out all the stops), but I find it unlikely that the British bureaucracy feared something like Brexit in the same way that the American bureaucracy feared being dominated by Trump/Trumpists.
Stewart Baker's great line about technology is that you never know how evil a technology can be until the engineers who designed it fear for their jobs. Trump was something like that, but somehow, maybe even worse. It's likely totally irrational fear, but most fear is irrational. That fear, and the knowledge that they got wrecked when they only implemented regular measures, was sufficient that they decided to roll the dice as many times as possible on as many questionable charges as they could come up with, knowing that they don't actually have total control of any one process and can't completely guarantee success in any one venue. They've had this power of prosecution in their back pocket for a long time. They've always kind of known it was there; it's the classic stuff of banana republics. They simply haven't tried smacking it down and asserting their hard power in quite such a fashion, maybe since Ted Stevens.
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Do you really, honestly think that could happen? Without the civil service pulling every dirty trick in the book? Without all sorts of scandals bubbling up out of the woodwork? Without strikes? Without rebellions in the Lords? Without legal challenges?
Regardless, if the necessary requirement to get conservative policies passed is ‘lead a rebellion to replace the existing bureaucracy’ then that sounds exactly like an oligarchy to me. The King technically has the power to overthrow the PM tomorrow but if there’s no realistic prospect of exerting that power then you don’t really have it. Same with the government. The set of powers it has in reality is far, far smaller than the ones it’s supposed to have.
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