Watch: Sir Humphrey admits ‘I told colleagues I voted Remain’

Vindication, at last. For seven years, we have been told that the civil service is a bastion of impartiality, that the Foreign Office was utterly without agenda and that anyone who dared question this was a dangerous, Trumpite populist. But now Lord McDonald – the very model of a modern major mandarin – has given the game away. 

In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg, McDonald – who served as Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office from 2015 to 2020 – spoke about the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. Under the civil service code, officials are of course expected to uphold the fundamental principle of impartiality. But that didn’t stop McDonald from blithely going ahead and trumpeting how he voted. He told Kuenssberg that  ‘on this solitary occasion I decided to tell my colleagues and therefore let ministers know that I voted to remain in the European Union’. Asked why he took this unprecedented step, he said ‘I felt they would assume that in any case.