One of the most important institutions in British politics has become one of its biggest scapegoats.
Suella Braverman is on thin ice, to say the least. The careless acquisition of a speeding charge followed by an alleged attempt to get civil servants to arrange a one-to-one speed awareness course for her amounts to breaking the ministerial code if proven true.
But not getting away with the speeding sesh wasn’t the result of a real-life Mario Kart blue shell, oh no! According to the right-wing press narrative, Braverman may be unjustly torn away from power because the very Civil Service she allegedly used to try and airbrush her wrongdoing, denied her ridiculous request because of the political motivation to get her out.
GB News hack Dan Wootton has already peddled headlines to this effect with a youtube video titled ‘The entire Suella speeding story is a farce engineered by the blob’, The Telegraph has produced an equally incoherent corker: “Now the woke blob is coming for Braverman.” Ask the average red wall voter, won over in 2019, what these phrases mean and you are unlikely to get much of an answer.
The blob refers to a particular contingent of Civil Service which deliberately refuses to carry out government policy to the letter because of not-so-secret political alliances. As the ruling party is right-wing and creates opponents to excuse piss-poor performances, it’s only natural that the blob consists of left-wing wokies.
Other examples in this regard include the ‘remainer deep state’, which Boris Johnson referred to, as well as Liz Truss’s left-wing economic establishment being the only thing preventing her from outlasting a lettuce. Another example was a resignation letter for Dominic Raab, which was preempted by the fact he exhibited bullying behaviour among Civil Servants, but according to Raab himself he should be allowed to bully them at least a little bit, or the letter hinted at as much.
Now, it goes without saying that the Civil Service is a politically neutral workforce which carries out government policy. So where did these people get it into their heads they are not just doing their job, and in the case of Braveman, just following the actual bloody law?
The etymological origins of ‘the blob’ did not come from a Conservative Party gogglebox session watching the 1988 horror film of the same name, believe it or not. It was dreamt up by another horror director: enter Dominic Cummings.
Cummings, who was “something of a Robespierre” in his youth, channelled this so-called revolutionary spirit a bit too far and took on the “blob” which he called an informal alliance of senior civil servants and teachers who, in his opinion, sought to frustrate attempts at reform.
Invocation of the 1988 blob’ is probably more applicable to the Conservative Party in all honesty: a huge acidic mass grows in size and erodes and devours everything in its path. With the introduction of The Public Order Act and The Minimum Services Act, the Conservative party blob clearly has an appetite for dissolving basic freedom to protest and negotiate better pay and conditions.