The recent resignation of Angela Rayner and the resulting reshuffle may have dominated the headlines this weekend but the implications for policy delivery, and for civil servants working at the heart of government, run much deeper.
This reshuffle wasn’t just about ministerial musical chairs. It triggered machinery of government changes, reassigned major portfolios and exposed fault lines in how the government is trying to deliver its agenda. While reshuffles are nothing new in Westminster, the pace, scale and motivation behind this one underscore the challenges of governing in an era defined by public service imperatives, volatile politics and diminishing public trust.
In this piece, we assess what’s changed, what it means for the centre of government and how civil servants and ministers alike need to adapt in the months ahead.
1. This was a delivery reset, not just a political repair job
The reshuffle was triggered by an ethics ruling on Angela Rayner’s housing arrangements, but it rapidly evolved into a wholesale reorganisation of key delivery departments. Rayner had been leading the Employment Rights Bill, the Devolution Bill, planning reform and housing delivery. These touch every corner of government and her department (MHCLG) had been one regarded as one of the better-performing portfolios.
The speed and scope of changes suggest that Starmer’s team recognised they were falling behind on execution and decided to force a reset.
From a delivery standpoint, however, such sweeping changes one year into government risk significant disruption. Incoming ministers must rebuild relationships with officials, get across vast policy briefs and pick up major legislative and operational programmes already in flight. Good governance is not just about decisive action: it is also about continuity, institutional memory and managing transition well.
2. The core delivery mission has been absorbed into No.10 but at what cost?
The absorption of the Mission Delivery Unit – once Starmer’s flagship idea for coordinating cross-government missions – back into No. 10, and the creation of a new delivery unit under Darren Jones, now chief secretary to the prime minister and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster leading the Cabinet Office, marks a major shift in centre-of-government machinery. Jones is widely regarded as one of the most impressive members of the current government, demonstrating adroit command of his brief at Treasury as chief secretary to the Treasury, and replaces the also highly-regarded Pat McFadden.
The new delivery model appears to intend to rely heavily on digital dashboards and fast streamers, with policy advice concentrated in a small political cadre. While there is logic to simplifying reporting and centralising accountability, there are risks too. Data dashboards cannot substitute for political alignment, operational expertise, or meaningful engagement with frontline practitioners.
As academic Thomas Fleming notes in his comparative work on Westminster democracies, reshuffles and reorganisations often serve as a “symbolic tool of control” rather than a substantive change in delivery performance. Without strong coordination between the new unit, departments and operational leaders, the centre risks becoming a bottleneck rather than an enabler.
3. Skills, welfare, housing: key delivery levers have been rewired midstream
Several simultaneous machinery of government changes risk undermining hard-won policy momentum too. The decision to move skills policy from the Department for Education to the Department for Work and Pensions and reframe DWP as a labour market department is a gamble. It is even more so when such a move has little grounding in past success. Skills policy has repeatedly bounced across departments and rarely delivered coherent outcomes. The creation of Skills England was intended to provide stability and long-term focus, but its role now risks being undermined by yet another machinery of government change that fragments accountability and confuses stakeholders.
Meanwhile, housing and planning, already facing intense delivery pressure, now face a reset just as a suite of reforms was reaching maturity. At the same time, DWP is expected to reheat its programme of controversial welfare reforms, with cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIP) still in scope. These moves may make strategic sense from No.10’s political calculus but they create major operational risks in terms of continuity, clarity and deliverability.
4. Civil servants will need to adapt to a new centre of gravity
So what does all this mean for those working inside government?
First, expect tighter political control. With power consolidated in No.10 and allies of Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney promoted across key roles, civil servants will find themselves working with ministers who are closely aligned to the centre but also under pressure to deliver quickly.
Second, watch for shifting priorities. Although the Plan for Change remains nominally in place, the pivot to “three key outcomes” – NHS, economic security and borders – signals a narrowing of political bandwidth. If you’re leading a programme outside those areas, you may need to work harder to justify your resource allocation or visibility.
Third, don’t wait for clarity – shape it. Reshuffles can create ambiguity. But as we’ve argued in our work on delivery from the centre, success depends on aligning purpose, pounds and people from the outset. Civil servants must actively broker that alignment, clarifying strategic intent, stress-testing delivery feasibility and managing ministerial expectations.
5. Reshuffles are a test of system resilience and delivery maturity
It’s worth stepping back and asking: why do reshuffles destabilise delivery so much?
In part, it’s structural. As Lisa Thompson (2020) observes, Westminster systems suffer from “thin ministerial expertise and limited accountability for policy outcomes.” Frequent reshuffles exacerbate this problem, robbing departments of ministerial memory and long-term direction.
But it’s also cultural. Whitehall still tends to see reshuffles as a ministerial matter, with civil servants expected to adapt without question. In an era of complex, long-tail transformation agendas, that model arguably no longer works. Senior officials need to treat reshuffles as delivery inflection points: moments where risk needs to be reassessed, interfaces redefined and goals recalibrated.
Conclusion: what comes next?
This reshuffle should prompt three urgent reflections across government:
- Capability and continuity are not enemies of reform: they are its foundation. Ministers need the time and space to own their portfolios. Short-term political resets must not come at the cost of long-term capability.
- The centre must earn its authority not just by consolidating and interrogating data flows but by facilitating delivery insight, listening to frontline operational leaders and investing in the connective tissue that enables coherent implementation.
- Civil servants must lead from the middle using transitions to clarify alignment, challenge unrealistic expectations and shape implementation plans that are genuinely deliverable.
We have said before that delivery is not just about execution. It’s about sequencing. It’s about coherence. It’s about culture. This reshuffle has potentially added more volatility to the system but also opened up space to do things differently. The next 12 months will reveal whether that space is used wisely.
Patrick Diamond is professor of public policy at Queen Mary University of London and a former head of policy planning in No.10. Vijay K. Luthra is a public service transformation specialist and former civil servant, local government councillor, school governor and NHS NED