Five scandals involving Simon Case

Once, the Civil Service was viewed as the omniscient, omnipotent embodiment of the Establishment: a mandarin class par excellence. Sir Humphrey Appleby and his real-life equivalents could run rings round their ministers, rule their Whitehall dominions unencumbered and command fear and respect from their underlings.

Those halcyon days now seem like a distant memory. In the twentieth-first century, the civil service increasingly seems unable to even perform its essential duties properly: less Rolls-Royce and more Reliant Robin. Poorly-managed public projects from the Ajax tanks to NHS supercomputer have wasted billions, while the likes of Sir Philip Barton and Sir Matthew Rycroft have produced countless gaffe-filled select committee appearances.

Such blunders are perhaps encapsulated in the form of Simon Case, Cabinet Secretary and head of the Home Civil Service. Since being appointed to these roles in September 2020 he has been engulfed in a near-constant succession of crises and scandals. Greybeards in Whitehall shake their heads in bemusement.