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Wednesday 23 July 2008

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

The appointment of a Permanent Secretary at No. 10 Downing Street shows that the office of Prime Minister is swelling fit to burst. Everyone says that the man with the new post, Jeremy Heywood, is excellent. Nothing is known against him beyond his atrociously New Labour recreations in Who’s Who — ‘child-care, modern art, cinema, Manchester United’ — but it is not clear why his job needed to be invented. The Prime Ministership is not a government department. It is easy to list all the people who are annoyed by the new role — the permanent secretaries of real government departments, the Cabinet Ministers for whom they work, all the private secretaries in No. 10, and particularly the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, who has been taking literally Mr Brown’s promises about a politically neutral Civil Service. Not so easy to list the people who are pleased. Mr Heywood left his job as Principal Private Secretary to Tony Blair in 2003 and then worked for Morgan Stanley, but he did not need the title and emoluments of a permanent secretary to lure him back to No. 10: he returned there when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, as Head of Domestic Policy and Strategy. So presumably his title had to be further aggrandised because of the recent appointment of Stephen Carter as Head of Strategy. There is also someone called Jon Cunliffe, who was made ‘Head of International Economic Affairs, Europe and G8 Sherpa, Prime Minister’s Office’ when Mr Brown came in. So in No. 10, which is traditionally famous for not having proper kitchens to feed the Prime Minister, too many cooks are spoiling the broth. Mr Brown used to let it be known how much he disapproved of Mr Blair’s ‘sofa government’, but now he is cramming more and more people onto the sofa.

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