Television viewers and radio listeners grew used to the former senior civil servant Bob Kerslake, Lord Kerslake, speaking out about successive government iniquities in recent years. If it seemed unusual coming from a mandarin who was the former head of the civil service it was because his time in such a role had been unusually short and he felt free to express his views.
Kerslake, who has died of cancer aged 68, was certainly a public servant but spent very little of his career in the civil service: most of it had been in local government, working for a succession of local authorities including Sheffield city council. As his criticisms of Tory ministers grew closer to the bone after his retirement, ministers attacked him as a Labour stooge, though he sat in the Lords as a crossbench peer. He had actually been appointed to his senior role and the peerage by David Cameron.
