I would love to be back in Whitehall right now! The mood can hardly be less than exhilarating. The ultimate professional challenge for any civil servant must be to help a new government settle in and achieve the change that we all want to see.
The biggest challenge - for ministers and officials - will be to get the Whitehall machine working well on crosscutting issues, including the five key missions. There are no magic organisational solutions. A huge amount depends upon ministers willingness to work together as a team, and not as competitors trying to shine in comparison to their colleagues. Civil servants can encourage this at the margin, most obviously by not being too precious about departmental budgets.
Will the civil service be up to all the challenges that will be set by its new ministers? It will need to up its game but I hope that no-one starts talking about serious civil service reform. That would need to be part of a wide ranging review of the relationship between civil servants, ministers and Parliament. Our new government has much more immediate priorities.
But something has to change. The current crop of Permanent Secretaries have too often failed to speak truth to power. They have overseen rudderless departments whose staff complain that their work was increasingly reactive, devoid of any strategy or objectives. There will need to be a rapid gear change at all levels. Ministers should demand high quality, honest advice and support, and complain when they don’t get it.
We must also hope that ministers and officials work together to rebuild trust in government. This is another big multi-faceted challenge (there is a good summary here) but one important element must be appointment on merit. Some of the first ministerial appointments suggest that the Prime Minister indeed values merit over politics. Civil servants overseeing appointments to arms length bodies should follow this lead as far as they can.
It will help that the Rwanda issue has gone away. I could never understand how anyone could applaud any employer who instructed their staff to break the law. This prohibition surely applies even more strongly to those in those who have power over their fellow citizens.
In the same vein, I hope that our new ministers will show more humanity than their predecessors. You do no have to be pro-immigration or pro-crime to deplore the callous treatment, in recent years, of too many of our fellow citizens and asylum seekers. I particularly endorse this advice, recently republished by Professor Yarrow:
Finally, a quick word about the likely demand for greater proportional representation. It does not look good that the new government was installed by only 20.2% of those eligible to vote, and 33.7% of those voting. But … First Past the Post does give real power to politicians who want to achieve real change. I suspect that most policy civil servants like it that way.
Great analysis of the challenges facing Whitehall and government Ministers. Will they listen? We may allow ourselves a small glimmer of hope - after all, the new PM is at heart a public servant, and so is his Chief of Staff!
Sadly I suspect your final paragraph is bang on... policy civil servants don't like democracy - which exemplifies why we need deep reform of the Civil Service. And politicians mostly desire "power", not the privilege of representing their constituents, which is why we need deep reform of our so-called "democracy". PR would be a small step, but in today's connected world there are no barriers to Direct Democracy except the resistance from politicians and policy civil servants who would be disempowered.