Catherine Haddon

What are we actually trying to achieve?

Less

How are we navigating this particular crisis?

But more, what are the long-term consequences of this and is it really helpful to anyone?

tension playing out in public and also the turnover of senior civil servants actually permanent secretaries and indeed cabinet secretaries um in the last couple of years and it's i mean it's worth saying it's it's kind of ironic because the first sort of crime as it were that that ollie robbins uh is considered to have committed was implementing the prime minister's policy

And taking it on himself and showing, you know, that he would take the accountability for making that call and getting on with it himself.

I think it's also worth saying, like, the civil service does need to look hard at itself, make reform.

There are a lot of people know that.

And I'm confident that Antonio Romeo, you know, still very new in the job, but a longstanding civil servant has lots of thoughts about how she wants to improve it and wants to improve that relationship.

But you need that sort of positive mission driven effort by both civil servants and ministers that we can do better than this situation.

This should be a nadir.

The problem is there's a likelihood that this is actually just going to spark off yet more problems and not solve the problems at the heart of our state and improve the civil service.

Yeah, definitely.

And I mean, this, you know, you could...

sort of look at this in a different way never waste a crisis you know take this is raising all sorts of issues about how you know the prime minister gets advice on sort of the deep processes of how government operates about you know major appointments to key roles about relationship between number 10 and departments and also an incredibly nerdy point about number 10 understanding that

You know, the prime minister's private office sending out missives, chasing people.

The words number 10 wants are incredibly powerful across Whitehall.

So it may not feel to the prime minister that you're pushing a particular thing, but you are.

And understanding what it feels like to be outside of number 10 and getting messages from number 10.

There's great learning opportunities with all of this.