Simon Case ‘installed as new head of the civil service’ tomorrow

A former private secretary to the Duke of Cambridge is set to be the next head of the civil service, it emerged today.

Simon Case, drafted in by Boris Johnson to be the top aide at Number 10 earlier this year, is expected to be unveiled as the youngest Cabinet Secretary in living memory tomorrow.

The appointment of the 41-year-old, reported by the Financial Times, represents the latest stage in the Government’s dramatic shake-up of Whitehall.

Sir Mark Sedwill previously stepped down from the post with a £250,000 package after apparent clashes with maverick adviser Dominic Cummings.  

Mr Case spent almost two years working as William’s right-hand man before temporarily moving to Downing Street earlier this year to assist with the coronavirus response.

There had been speculation that a longer-serving official, such as Department of Health permanent secretary Chris Wormald, might get the top job. 

The senior mandarin at the Trade Department, Antonia Romeo, had also been widely tipped.  

However, Mr Case seems to have been given the nod. No10 source insisted the process had been handled by First Civil Service Commissioner Ian Whatmore.

Cabinet Office spokesman said: ‘An official announcement on the new Cabinet Secretary will be made on Tuesday 1 September.’

In June there were reports Mr Cummings told political aides a ‘hard rain is coming’ in Whitehall, suggesting the Cabinet Office needed radical overhaul.

A series of mandarins have departed during the drive for change. 

The recruitment of Mr Case as the permanent secretary at No10 was seen as sealing the fate of Sir Mark.

Downing Street had not had its own permanent secretary for eight years – since former Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood gave up the title.

Mr Case previously worked on the Brexit negotiations, and is well-regarded within the PM’s close circle.

It was he, rather than Sir Mark, who was tasked with carrying out the review into the two-metre social distancing rule that resulted in it being downgraded to ‘one metre plus’.   

One senior official told the FT: ‘Simon’s appointment is very much a ‘hard rain’ appointment. 

‘It’s a sign they want to do things quickly. 

‘But if the other permanent secretaries don’t recognise that person as ‘the boss’ there will be trouble. Will he find that the levers aren’t attached to anything?’

White out of government, Mr Cummings wrote extensive blogs detailing his fondness for ‘red teams’ explicitly tasked with finding reasons why policies should not be pursued, and his criticism of the Whitehall infrastructure.

That included saying the Cabinet room was not fit for purpose because it does not have any ‘tools’ for modern times – with even the clock not always working.

The former Vote Leave chief, who worked for Michael Gove at the Department for Education, previously described the civil service machine as ‘Kafkaesque’, and wrote of support for ministers: ‘The whole structure of ‘submissions’ and ‘red boxes’ is hopeless. It is extremely bureaucratic and slow… 

‘The whole approach reinforces the abject failure of the senior civil service to think about high performance project management.’ 

Civil service unions accused No10 of orchestrating a series of ‘corrosive and cowardly’ briefings against Sir Mark – whom Mr Cummings is said to have seen as a ‘roadblock’ to a Whitehall shake-up.

Sir Mark has hit out at ‘unpleasant’ off-the-record briefings and ‘sniping’.

Giving evidence to MPs, he called them a ‘regrettable feature of modern politics’. He also denied ‘resigning’, saying he had agreed with Boris Johnson to step down.