4 2GM Monday June 29 2020 | the times
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Sir Mark Sedwill’s departure will trigger
a two-month race to become Britain’s
most senior civil servant, the conclu-
sion of which is likely to coincide with a
cabinet reshuffle in the early autumn.
Boris Johnson’s allies moved last
night to make clear that neither of the
two senior officials in No 10 previously
linked to the job was being considered.
Helen McNamara, who was head of
propriety and ethics before her promo-
tion as Sir Mark’s de facto deputy, has
been promised a job as permanent sec-
retary to a large Whitehall department.
Simon Case, who was seconded from
his role as private secretary to the Duke
of Cambridge, is expected to be asked to
stay on as a permanent secretary in No
- He will be responsible for making a
slimmed-down Cabinet Office more
responsive to Downing Street, Mr
Johnson’s allies said.
It was the prime minister’s decision to
ask Mr Case to lead the review into the
two-metre rule, rather than Sir Mark,
that exposed the extent to which the
cabinet secretary had been sidelined.
Mr Johnson’s official spokesman nota-
bly failed to say that he would be in the
role into the new year when questioned
on Friday. Some observers made unflat-
tering comparisons between the two
men’s style, suggesting that Sir Mark, a
former envoy to Afghanistan, was un-
suited to a complex domestic crisis.
Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s
senior adviser who is said to have fallen
out with Sir Mark, has championed
outsiders coming into No 10, famously
issuing a call for “weirdos and misfits”
to join him in Downing Street in Janu-
ary. However, Mr Johnson’s allies
Sidelined cabinet
secretary finally
falls on his sword
Francis Elliott Political Editor moved to quash speculation that the
successor could be brought in from the
outside, despite a recent trend for re-
cruiting business figures to take charge
of elements of the Covid response.
Instead, the job will go to a current or
former permanent secretary, Downing
Street made clear.
One Whitehall source said there had
been a “clear trade off” between the ap-
pointment of David Frost, Mr Johnson’s
chief Brexit adviser, as national secur-
ity adviser and the terms under which
Sir Mark’s successor would be chosen.
Although he is a former civil servant,
Mr Frost’s Brexit appointment was a
political one and he would not normal-
ly be considered for the national secur-
ity role, let alone be handed it without
an open competition within Whitehall.
At the same time the civil service
commission, which has a legal duty to
oversee senior civil service appoint-
ments, insisted that the next cabinet
secretary must be either a serving or
former permanent secretary, limiting
Mr Johnson’s field of choice.
One source said this was the “hill”
that the commission had chosen to
make its stand on.
“It was a clear trade off,” they said.
“Johnson got his man in the national
security role but can’t pick whoever he
wants to be a cabinet secretary.”
Mr Johnson is said to want a new cab-
inet secretary in place by the autumn
when he is expected to conduct a re-
shuffle to coincide with the completion
of the merger between the Foreign
Office and Department for Inter-
national Development.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the secre-
tary of state for international develop-
ment, is expected to be found another
cabinet post necessitating a shake-up.
The enforced departure of Sir Mark,
who had been seen less and less in No
10 in recent weeks, angered some min-
isters and civil service colleagues. One
said any attempt by Mr Johnson to
scapegoat Sir Mark for government er-
rors in its handling of the Covid re-
sponse would be “disgraceful”. “Bad
workmen blame their tools,” they said.
His departure coincides with another
change to the cabinet committee struc-
ture after the conclusion of the initial
health crisis posed by coronavirus.
Mr Johnson will chair three new
committees on domestic, international
and economic priorities to set strategy
with individual cabinet ministers
tasked with cross-Whitehall imple-
mentation. One, the economic opera-
tions committee, will be dedicated to
repairing the damage to the economy
caused by the pandemic.
Downing Street said the new system
was modelled on the structure used for
the Brexit negotiations and the res-
ponse to the initial health emergency.
There were no further details of which
ministers would sit on the committees.
Labour criticised the prime minister’s
decision to announce the reform of his
backroom team on the day reports
showed that one million more people
could become unemployed, on top of 2.
million people already jobless, if further
government support was not forthcom-
ing by August. Helen Hayes, the shadow
Cabinet Office minister, said: “On the
day it was revealed millions of jobs
across the country could be under
threat in the coming months, it is very
concerning that Boris Johnson and Do-
minic Cummings are preoccupied with
reshuffling Whitehall.”News Politics
A victory for No 10’s ‘children
in battle with the grown-ups’
Behind the story
S
ir Mark Sedwill never
expected to become cabinet
secretary but neither did he
expect to leave the job so
soon — becoming the
shortest-serving head of the civil
service since the post was created
over a hundred years ago (Francis
Elliott and Oliver Wright write).
He got the top job in tragic
circumstances when his
predecessor, Lord Heywood of
Whitehall, died in post. At the
time the former Nato envoy to
Afghanistan and Home Office
permanent secretary had already
got his dream post, that of national
security adviser.
Steeped in the worlds of the
intelligence and security services,
Sir Mark was part of Theresa
May’s efforts to dilute the
influence of Treasury-schooled
officials in No 10 that saw theinitial part of her government
dubbed “Home Office Britain”. He
was also, as colleagues admitted at
the time, one of the very few
people in government capable of
working closely with the prime
minister. Sir Mark returned the
loyalty. He made clear his
contempt for cabinet ministers
opposed to her Chequers Brexit
deal, including Boris Johnson,
privately describing them as
“children” in June 2018 shortly
before he took over.
When a year later Lord
Heywood took a leave of absence
as a result of a cancer diagnosis Sir
Mark stepped in to take on the
cabinet secretary role as well as
his NSA brief. The arrangement
became permanent when the
former cabinet secretary died from
the disease in October.
Despite his close association
with Mrs May, Mr Johnson kept
the cabinet secretary in placewhen he arrived in No 10 last July.
An ally of the prime minister said
at the time that he wanted to avoid
a head-on collision with the civil
service.
Relations with Dominic
Cummings, Mr Johnson’s senior
adviser, were said to be good
despite Mr Cummings’s
voluminous public critiques of
Whitehall’s failings, many of which
were reprised — albeit with a
honeyed gloss — by Michael Gove
this weekend.
What harmony there was
between the political and official
wings of “The House”, as inmates
call No 10, was always largely for
the cameras, however, with mutual
suspicion a more truthful
characterisation.
As the threat of the coronavirus
pandemic formed on the horizon
in early spring the political aides
found themselves sidelined as the
civil contingencies machinery fordealing with crises swung into
action. As first Mr Johnson and
then Mr Cummings fell ill some
officials briefed that the “grown-
ups” were now in charge.
But amid the pressure of the
government’s flawed response to
the pandemic neither the “grown-
ups” nor the “children” were
blameless.
And with both sides well aware
of the inevitability of a futurepublic inquiry, suspicion and
recrimination poisoned the
atmosphere in Downing Street.
Mr Johnson’s political allies
privately accused Sir Mark of not
taking personal responsibility for
the Covid crisis while officials
complained of being cut out of key
decisions.
Two sources said yesterday that
the conflict came to a head in May
during a tense standoff between
Mr Johnson and Sir Mark over the
government’s blueprint for easing
the lockdown.
After the plan had been outlined
to the prime minister he asked:
“Who is in charge of
implementing this delivery plan?”
He looked over at Sir Mark and
said, “Is it you?” to which Sir Mark
replied: “No, I think it’s you, prime
minister.” A few days later Simon
Case, a former civil servant
working as principal private
secretary to Prince William, was
brought in to take charge of the
response in a newly created role of
No 10 permanent secretary.
“That was the moment the
relationship broke down,” said one
Whitehall source. “And when it
became public, in Mark’s mind it
was over. How can you carry on in
such an environment when theSir Mark Sedwill was knighted by the
Queen in 2018 for services to securityDominic Cummings was among onlookers as Sir Mark Sedwill welcomed Boris