Cheerful Letwin dons martyr's crown for Kids

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/19/cheerful-letwin-dons-martyrs-crown-for-kids

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One of the trickiest philosophical questions of the modern age has been “why Oliver?” Or, more specifically, why did Oliver Letwin choose to become a minister for the Cabinet Office? Letwin is intelligent, decent, charming and truthful – any one of those qualities should have automatically disqualified him for the position.

On Thursday the truth was revealed when Letwin appeared before the Commons public administration committee to explain why he had carried on doling out cash to Kids Company long after everyone else had worked out that the charity hadn’t a clue how to handle money.

Letwin has been on a mission. A mission to recreate the life of Saint Sebastian. While the rest of the Conservative party had long since abandoned the Big Society as a sick joke, Oliver the Good had been observing whole armies of invisible little people running around making even littler people’s lives better.

“Do your worst,” the would-be St Oliver exclaimed, ripping off his shirt and tying himself to a tree. The committee took him at his word, firing arrow after arrow into his bare torso.

Trying to catalogue the errors St Oliver has made in his handling of Kids Company is a category error. There are simply too many to count. You would be better off searching for things he had got right.

Hard as they tried to join St Oliver within the cushioned Arabian tent that Camila Batmanghelidjh had erected for herself inside her Southwark office, no one on the committee could quite share his Panglossian view that Kids Company had been a thoroughly worthwhile use of a third of the government’s youth-sector spending.

“Oh yes,” St Oliver admitted cheerfully and truthfully, when asked if he had been aware the numbers had never quite stacked up. Yes, there was a bit of a discrepancy between the 36,000 people the charity said it helped and the 1,909 it actually had, but that was the whole point of the Big Society. So, naturally, despite knowing that Kids Company was financially screwed, you gave them £4.265m.

“Oh yes,” St Oliver admitted cheerfully and truthfully. But he had warned them that would definitely be the last money they ever got from him unless they improved their accounting methods and could show they had actually helped some kids. And they had definitely taken all that on board, because he had spoken to Alan Yentob personally about it from his ministerial car.

“But it wasn’t the last money you ever doled out to Kids Company,” the committee chairman, Bernard Jenkin observed, as, last July, he had given them another £3m, against his own civil servants’ advice, the day before the charity folded. “If I may say so, the charity was rather like a profligate maiden aunt to whom you handed out money regardless.”

“Oh yes,” St Oliver admitted cheerfully and truthfully, not at all hurt by this latest unnecessary unkindness, by now sounding rather more like Mole out of Wind in the Willows. This £3m was very different from the last £4.2m because he had made Kids company promise to change most of its officers before he handed it over even though they hadn’t quite got round to doing it.

And why hadn’t he withheld the money until the promised matched private funding had reached Camila’s mitts? “Because if I hadn’t given the money the charity would have gone bankrupt,” St Moley admitted cheerfully and truthfully, seemingly unaware that the charity did go belly up the very next day. “The private money would have come. The donors had given me their word. They promised.”

St Moley staggered out, blood pouring from his wounds, a look of transcendent ecstasy on his face. His martyrdom was complete. Kids Company had been too good to fail. Could the same be said for him?