New top mandarin echoes PM's warning to Whitehall

The new cabinet secretary Sir Chris Wormald has delivered a stark pre-Christmas warning on his first day on the job as Britain’s top civil servant. In a message to all civil servants across Whitehall, Sir Chris echoed the comments of the prime minister that they must stop being a block to progress, with an enjoinder that “we must do things differently”.

- DAVID MADDOX

The new top mandarin toned down the language after Sir Keir Starmer was described as having been “Trumpian” in his attack on civil servants. The prime minister said in a major speech earlier this month that “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”, though he insisted he did not think there was a “swamp to be drained here”.

Sir Chris, who was a surprise appointment having previously served as permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, has pledged to go through with Sir Keir’s ambition to perform a “rewiring of the way the government works”.