“The prime minister and the cabinet secretary have agreed that Chris Wormald will stand down as the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service by mutual agreement,” went the 12 February press release.
Mandarinese language does not hide the fact that Wormald was fired after only a year, thereby becoming the shortest tenured cabinet secretary. The previous holder of that unenviable title, Mark Sedwill, was dismissed in 2020 after only two years. That came after an unedifying tug-of-war with Dominic Cummings over who effectively was running Boris Johnson’s domestic and security policy (Sedwill also held the national security adviser role). Cummings prevailed, adding another scalp to his war on government.
Tension at the very apex of the political-official interface is not uncommon. Firing a cabinet secretary is. While there have been only 15 secretaries to the cabinet since its creation in December 1916, it is interesting that Tony Blair got through four. That restless premier felt he only got the cabinet secretary he wanted eight years into his decade with the appointment of Gus O’Donnell. Alastair Campbell’s diaries are littered with dissatisfactions on both sides.
But Blair never fired one – Robin Butler, Richard Wilson and Andrew Turnbull all retired at the age of 60. What Blair did do was to work around them, particularly in his second term, with the traditional role of cabinet secretary split three ways. David Omand was the security and intelligence coordinator; responsibility for honours went to the Lord Chancellor’s Department (from 2003, the Department of Constitutional Affairs) and its permanent secretary, Hayden Phillips; and Michael Barber was head of the Delivery Unit, taking on the role of driving progress on prime ministerial priorities. Turnbull wrote the cabinet minutes and kept the central machine turning – indeed, it was remarked how uninvolved he was over the Iraq decision. One’s thoughts turn to Walter Bagehot’s famous efficient-versus-dignified dichotomy – comparing the ceremonial parts of government with the less visible parts that actually perform the work.
Wormald’s role was not just cabinet secretary but also head of the (in earlier days “home”) civil service. The fusing of the two functions in one person has not historically always been the case. Throughout much of the mid-20th century, the role was to be found as joint secretary to the Treasury, with Laurence Helsby its last occupier. The practice ended with the creation of the Civil Service Department in 1968 in response to the legendary Fulton Report, and its new permanent secretary, William Armstrong, was named head of the home civil service. Even this only lasted 13 years as Margaret Thatcher abolished the department in 1981 after finding it inefficient and its last permanent secretary, Ian Bancroft, troublesome.
Bancroft was an archetypal Sir Humphrey of the old school: a war hero, strong, clever and cool. It was said he had a frank exchange of views with the PM over her mantra of “advisers advise, ministers decide”, responding that it was indeed his job to advise “and hers was, at least at first, to listen”. It is delicious to imagine her fury! After this and other contretemps, Thatcher abolished the CSD and sent its venerable boss into slightly early retirement, where he continued to rile the prime minister with lines such as: “Conviction politicians, certainly. Conviction civil servants, no.”
Bancroft’s phlegmatic nature lived long in the folk memory of Whitehall and its watchers with his choice lines. Facing a tricky problem, he would say: “I think we’ll have to draft around that one.” When security staff found a 1970s Cabinet Office minister had failed to secure one of two filing cabinets – one for official work and one for party documents – that had to be locked overnight, the minister was hauled up in front of Bancroft who, on finding it was the political one, exclaimed: “They bowled you out but it was a no-ball!” And perhaps my favourite line, over the naming of a new department: “Ah! Now, there’s something the ministers can decide!”
These are the only effective examples of dismissal in the modern era. Since the two-decades-long stints served by the first cabinet secretary, Maurice Hankey (1916-38) and the head of the home civil service, Warren Fisher (1919-39 who was also permanent secretary to the Treasury), tenures have in recent times been getting shorter. It will be interesting to see if Dame Antonia Romeo bucks this trend.
Professor Jon Davis is director of the Strand Group at King’s College London