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SIMON CASEYour browser does not support the element. sounded more than ready for retirement as he gave his valedictory speech on December 3rd. The cabinet secretary, Britain’s most senior unelected official, was dressed for a shooting weekend, in a green tweed check suit, and leaned on a cane—the result of a health condition that, he has revealed, has unjustly forced his exit from government at the age of 45. In four years he had served through a pandemic, an economic crisis, four prime ministers and two monarchs; at times, he felt that “the weight of some of the world” was on his shoulders. He sounded stung by the cynicism that greeted those who gave themselves to public service. He read passages of Teddy Roosevelt’s ode to “the man in the arena”. “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles.”Sir Chris Wormald, his successor, will take office on December 16th. In recent decades cabinet secretaries have tended to be either Treasury wallahs (such as Jeremy Heywood, Gus O’Donnell and Andrew Turnbull), securocrats (such as Mr Case and Mark Sedwill) or both (such as Robert Armstrong). Sir Chris breaks the mould in coming from a big spending department; he has spent eight years running the health department, and four years at education.That may be a deficiency, given that the job advert had called for a knowledge of geopolitics (and cabinet secretaries who know the Treasury’s ways are better at standing up to it). But Sir Chris’s elevation reflects the priority of the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, of turning public services round before the next election: bedpans beat battleships.Sir Keir set out the in-tray in a speech on December 5th, which—perhaps belatedly in his five-month old premiership—outlined a series of headline targets to be met by the end of the parliament that would fix the “basic functions of the state”. These included an increase in household disposable income; the approval of “at least” 150 major infrastructure projects; a reduction in National Health Service waiting times so that 92% of patients do not wait longer than 18 weeks for elective treatment; and seeing that 75% of new primary-school pupils are deemed ready to learn when they start school.The prime minister declared that the targets would “land on desks across Whitehall with the heavy thud of a gauntlet being thrown down”. He suggested that the civil service had responded to the public’s low trust in politics by reducing its ambition and setting goals that would be easily met. “I don’t think there’s a swamp to be drained here, but I do think too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline,” he said.A lot is riding on it—not just for Sir Keir’s future, but that of Britain’s civil service, which enjoys a permanent tenure of employment in exchange for loyally executing the elected government’s agenda. Faith in this 170-year-old model fell among some Conservative ministers, who characterised the machine as ineffective and partisan. If the civil service is deemed unable to deliver by Labour ministers too, then its position will be precarious, says Alex Thomas of the Institute for Government, a think-tank. In a recent speech to Parliament Lord Turnbull lamented how Sir Keir has followed a recent trend in filling his Downing Street with politically appointed special advisers, tipping the balance from the permanent institutions.It leaves Sir Chris with a near impossible job. He must be Sir Keir’s trusted right-hand man and keeper of secrets; among the cabinet secretary’s tasks are oversight of the intelligence agencies and liaison with Buckingham Palace. But he must also be the leader of the 500,000-strong civil service, which is both demoralised and in need of radical reform. Mr Case’s critics say he was too inexperienced and too chummy with Boris Johnson, his first prime minister, to properly lead his embattled colleagues. “The barons around the table, the departmental permanent secretaries, were less inclined than they might have been to accept his authority as a given,” said Sir David Lidington, a former Conservative minister.Sir Chris’s stature as a civil-service lifer should help, says one Whitehall veteran, who calls him “the doyen of the permanent secretaries”. He has kept a low profile, but a public inquiry into the handling of covid-19, expected to run for two more years, has the potential to produce plenty of dangerous moments. People who worked with him under the last administration describe a shrewd strategist. “He literally sits in his office and thinks,” says one wonk, “often bouncing a rugby ball in his hand as he does.” He has managed the friction between ministers and officials by taking time to understand what makes them tick, and ferreting out smarter ways to execute what they want. “He is an absolute democrat,” says one former colleague. “He wants politicians to make the decisions.”
