Sir Humphrey wins again
The antics of the mandarin masters of Whitehall have long been of interest to Mr S. Back in September, Steerpike revealed that the Director for Civil Service Modernisation and Reform was appointed last year without any external or internal competition. This is despite much hot air and hyperbole from the master of spin himself, Michael Gove, the recently-departed minister for the Cabinet Office. For last year, during the heady days of the Dominic Cummings era, there was much talk of a civil service revolution, with plans to move them out of London, hire specialists in place of generalists and purge the ‘confident public school bluffers’ as part of a ‘hard rain’ on SW1.
