The disgraceful impugning of a civil servant's reputation

This Gavin Williamson affair is getting dirtier by the day. "Friends" of the sacked defence secretary - journalistic code for Williamson himself - have claimed his firing was all a vendetta orchestrated by Sir Robin Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary and National Security Adviser. He, Sedwill, had it in for Williamson ever since they had rows over defence spending and had already made up his mind that he, Williamson, was guilty of leaking the secret Huawei decision to a journalist on The Daily Telegraph. That's the supposed real truth behind the sacking. Well I'm on the outside and have no privileged information about either of these two gentlemen in this current situation. But after working as a journalist in Whitehall, including a period as Whitehall Editor on The Times, I can say with some conviction that a civil servant who ends up as cabinet secretary does not ensure the sacking of a minister on the grounds that he and the minister had had a disagreement over spending. Sir Mark Sedwill's remit from Theresa May was to uncover who had leaked the secret information about Huawei to the newspaper. Full stop. I cannot for the life of me imagine that the prime minister said, "Sir Mark, we need to get rid of Williamson, so make sure you find/concoct/make up compelling evidence against him." That is just total nonsense and an outrage to suggest it, as "friends" of the sacked minister appear to be saying or implying. Sedwill examined or got MI5/GCHQ to examine the mobile phones of eight ministers who attended the notorious National Security Council meeting, and the only one that came up trumps (sorry, wrong word) was the mobile phone of Williamson. It proved that he had had a telephone conversation lasting 11 minutes with the reporter Steven Swinford. Williamson denies Huawei even came up in the conversation. But come on, who believes that? Swinford is such a good reporter that The Times has recruited him (before this story broke by the way) and he joins as deputy political editor very soon. There is absolutely no way that Swinford, on the day the secret meeting was held, would not have asked Williamson, "Oh and by the way, Gavin, what happened at the NSC meeting? Anything you can tell me? Can you give me a steer?" Or Swinford might even have used the well known Fleet Street ploy which would have gone something like this: "Gavin, would it be ok for me to write that a decision was made to approve of Huawei's involvement but perhaps only in a limited way, something like that? And could I speculate perhaps that you were opposed to the decision, and others too, such as Sajid Javid (Home Secretary) and Jeremy Hunt (Foreign Secretary)? Don't reply if I'm right and then I'll know I'm right". Silence follows lasting five or six seconds. Williamson then replies with a few words about Brexit and the Tory leadership. Voila, the secret is divulged without a word from Williamson. This is just speculation on my part but after a lifetime in journalism. One of the reasons why I believe this is what probably happened is that Williamson swore on his children's lives that he was innocent. Again, from long experience, people who swear on their children's lives or their mother's life or say things like "I swear on the Bible" are often/generally lying. Criminals do it all the time when questioned by police. It's just a very odd and rather creepy thing to say, swearing innocence on your children's lives. Leave the poor children out of it I say. And as for impugning the integrity of Sir Mark Sedwill, that says a lot about Williamson, none of it pleasant.