There are a handful of big things to watch out for following Sir Philip Rutnam’s resignation as Home Office Permanent Secretary:
- Whether in laying out his case for constructive dismissal, evidence emerges that makes it impossible for Priti Patel to remain as home secretary.
- Whether other permanent secretaries and senior civil servants show solidarity with Rutnam, thus making it harder for Dominic Cummings to reform how they and civil servants support the Government, and harder for him to streamline the centre of government and the Cabinet Office.
- What the soon-to-be-published independent report into the scandal of the deportation of Windrush immigrants says about the competence of the Home Office and Rutnam’s stewardship of the Home Office (difficult to believe this will make painless reading for Rutnam).
Just to be clear, in the early days of Thatcher’s and Blair/Brown’s time in office, much of the senior civil service felt under siege, offended and bruised by new prime ministers who saw traditional Whitehall as resistant to the kind of radical change they wanted.
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