Sir Chris Wormald is the shortest-serving cabinet secretary in history, pushed out barely a year after Keir Starmer said there "could be no-one better placed" to drive forward the government's agenda. His departure follows a pattern: the boss of the civil service, the chief of staff, the head of communications – all gone in quick succession. Lisa Nandy said Labour had been operating as a "boys' club" and that she had been subject to briefings "dripping with misogyny". One minister, asked how big a problem this was, replied: "Massive."
The debate about sexism and misogyny in politics will rightly continue, but another angle on the "boys' club" problem concerns whether the British state still has the institutional capability required to govern effectively in an era of unprecedented complexity and volatility.
Consider what the Wormald saga tells us. A veteran with 35 years of experience in the civil service, appointed to the most senior role in Whitehall, publicly undermined by anonymous briefings within months, and then removed without explanation less than a year later. Lord O'Donnell called it "shabby", labelling it one of the government's "biggest failings", a pattern repeated "right from the start with Sue Gray". The FDA's Dave Penman drew an explicit comparison with the Johnson-Cummings era, calling Wormald's departure "a new low". Whoever replaces Wormald will be the third cabinet secretary in less than eighteen months, following a reshuffle in which over half of ministers changed roles. The chief of staff role in 10 Downing Street has witnessed a similar rate of churn. Such instability risks undermining the Starmer government's ability to deliver its agenda.
Penman's column in these pages made the capability argument plainly. A government that only last month told civil servants to take risks and promised ministers would have their back has just demonstrated the opposite in the most visible way possible. Will the treatment of Wormald encourage the brightest and best into government? Will civil servants feel more trustful of ministers, or less risk-averse? The systematic undermining of senior officials, Penman wrote, "is not simply about the treatment of a committed public servant, as reprehensible as that is. It is also about effective government."
We have seen the consequences of closed decision-making circles and inadequate leadership at the top of government before. Helen MacNamara told the Covid inquiry that too few women among pandemic decision-makers at the centre of government meant insufficient thought was given to childcare during school closures, to domestic violence victims trapped in lockdown, and to the disproportionate burden on women in caring roles. Car showrooms and golf courses were reportedly considered for reopening before children's playgrounds. These were not minor oversights. They affected millions of people. They were caused not by malice but by homogeneity among government policymakers.
This is the heart of the capability argument. A state that draws its decision-makers from too narrow a pool will consistently fail to anticipate the consequences of its own policies. Not because those people are incompetent, but because no small group of similar people can hold the full complexity of a modern society in their heads.
This matters acutely now. The challenges facing Britain, from AI and automation to climate adaptation, from demographic change to geopolitical turbulence, are systemic. They cut across departmental boundaries, political cycles, and policy silos. They cannot be solved by a handful of advisers from the same milieu.
This is what we mean by the strategic state: not bigger or smaller government, but a state with the capability to align missions, hold direction across political cycles, and mobilise diverse actors around shared outcomes. That requires cognitive diversity in decision-making, distributed intelligence across the system, and institutional learning that draws on the widest possible range of experience. The "boys' club" model structurally undermines all three.
There is hope in some quarters that the culture has shifted. Women now hold several of the most powerful positions in Whitehall. But changing faces without changing the system is the oldest trick in the reform playbook. The briefing against Dame Antonia Romeo in recent days, focusing on her ambition and appearance, suggests the culture has not shifted.
Dave Penman's direct challenge to the prime minister was correct: the briefing has to stop, and "plausible deniability is not good enough and it never was". Yet stopping the briefing is necessary, not sufficient. The deeper question is whether the British state can build decision-making processes that institutionalise diverse perspectives, reward challenge rather than punishing it, and sustain the trust and stability that complex reform demands. The next cabinet secretary appointment will tell us whether the government has understood that, or whether this was just another rearrangement of the deck chairs.
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