Is there a UK "deep state"?

[Peter Presland]

Peter - thanks for that.

Some risible comments on that thread.

Carne Ross is behaving courageously, but I think he points the finger in the wrong direction when he writes:

I (Carne Ross) testified last week to the Chilcot inquiry. My experience demonstrates an emerging and dangerous problem with the process. This is not so much a problem with Sir John Chilcot and his panel, but rather with the government bureaucracy – Britain's own "deep state" – that is covering up its mistakes and denying access to critical documents.

I do not believe that the core problem is "government bureaucracy".

Rather it is the deep political forces which operate to shape and manipulate geopolitical events, and the public record of such events.

"Government bureaucracy" is a tool occasionally used by these deep political forces.

Carne Ross is confused when he equates this "government bureaucracy" with the "deep state".

I agree Jan.

It is sooo hard for former high-ranking FCO people to see the wood for the trees. Craig Murray is another example. He paid a high price for a principled stand against complicity in pure evil, but he needs to earn again and he's tasted the perquisites of rank in the service of the State - peremptory cashiering or reduction to the ranks is so very hard to take. His solution is to cultivate a dissident public image but he tiptoes around issues which risk marking him as something a little more dangerous than that of the token in-house awkward sod - or should that be Court Jester? He just knows in his gut that there are boundaries he must respect and so talks about fixing a system which is frankly beyond fixing.

They cannot seem to see that it is the State itself - in service to interests totally unconnected (or rather antagonistic) to the real interests of the mass of the population - that is rotten to the core.