Post Office Plans Employee Takeover: Sub-Postmasters to Step Up or Step Down, Depending on Who Steals What Next

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In an utterly baffling twist for an organization that’s essentially been trenched in scandal like a rogue politician at a funeral, the UK government is musing over the idea of handing the Post Office to sub-postmasters. Yes, you heard that right! The very folks they threw under the bus when they mistakenly accused them of robbing their own branches might now be tasked with running the place themselves. What a charming plan! Who wouldn’t want to take on a management gig that comes with a government subsidy and a side of existential dread?

The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has enlisted the consultancy BCG—because what could possibly go wrong with handing such a sensitive operation to glorified corporate babysitters? After all, it’s worked wonders with our financial institutions over the last few decades. Apparently, the idea is to make the postmasters co-owners, like a cooperative version of a bad reality TV show where the prize is the maintenance of a time-honored institution that may or may not be waiting for its own funeral.

Meanwhile, the Post Office, the nation’s most extensive retail network (if you ignore the actual stores we go to), is only afloat thanks to government handouts. Talk about dependency! It’s almost as if they’re the adult child living in their parents’ basement while insisting they’ll get their life together someday.

The irony peaks when you realize that a former minister, Kevin Hollinrake, discussed this lofty idea with union officials while many sub-postmasters are still preventing their mental breakdowns over being unjustly accused of stealing. Sure, let’s add mutualization to the list of things that could go wrong in their lives! It’ll be great fun watching them juggle new IT systems—and by “great fun,” I mean a slow-motion train wreck.

And what about the hapless ex-postmaster Vipin Patel? After being wrongly accused of pilfering £34,000, he’s now trying to figure out how to ensure that future postmasters aren’t swimming with sharks while wearing cement shoes. His pleas for clarity and governance remind me of asking how to make a sinking ship unsinkable with a bucket and some spit.

Oh, and let’s not forget the former chairman who was sacked for governance failings—because sacking someone for being bad at governance is a bit like sending a pirate to sea with a map and a parrot, expecting them not to end up shipwrecked. Meanwhile, the internal squabbles continue, revealing that even the boardroom resembles a soap opera crossed with a circus.

In light of this chaos, the suggestion to seek compensation from former directors is as useful as a chocolate teapot. Still, let’s keep our fingers crossed that one of the next CEOs doesn’t use their resignation letter as an over-the-top performance a la Shakespearean tragedy.

At the rate things are going, it might just turn out that the biggest scandal of all wasn’t the false charges against sub-postmasters but the very public shambles of trying to ‘fix’ an unfixable postal service. Because why fix something when you can simply hand it off to the very ones you wrongfully accused? Ah, bureaucracy—the gift that keeps on giving!