Hazel Blears’ former SpAd, Paul Richards – who wrote that perceptive, Monty Python-referencing analysis of Labour’s defeat in Norwich North a couple of weeks ago – has an article in today’s Times on the “Sisyphean task” that the Tories may face in reforming the civil service. It’s well worth reading the whole thing, but its central point is enshrined in this passage:
“…the culture of the Civil Service is so risk-averse that it is hard to see it embracing its own transformation. When I arrived at the Department of Health I was told this story: when Tony Blair walked into the Cabinet Room at Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robin Butler, was keen to prove to his new boss that the central government machine wasn’t all portraits of Walpole and William IV table legs. He pointed to a cupboard, and said: ‘And in here we have the latest technology.’
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