Former senior civil servants have condemned attacks on Sir Keir Starmer’s preferred choice for his new Cabinet Secretary as “outrageous” and driven by a man “enjoying the spotlight too much”.
The Prime Minister is expected to appoint Antonia Romeo to head up the civil service in the coming days after forcing out Sir Chris Wormald out of the top job after just a year in the role.
Downing Street announced that Wormald would be leaving the job by “mutual agreement” with the position being covered by Romeo, Catherine Little, the Cabinet Office permanent secretary and Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler in the interim.
He is the third member of Starmer’s senior No10 team to leave in the last week, after chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and head of communications Tim Allan.
Unusual intervention
Starmer’s plan to appoint Romeo sparked a highly unusual intervention from Lord Simon McDonald, Romeo’s former boss during her time in the Foreign Office, who went on live TV to claim she was not suited for the position.
He highlighted allegations around Romeo of bullying and misuse of expenses during her time working at the UK’s consul general in New York between 2016 and 2017.
Speaking to Channel 4 News, McDonald insisted there should be a “full process” to select the next Cabinet Secretary and that the vetting process should start again “from scratch”.
“This is the most important job in the civil service. It can’t be chosen on the fly,” he said on Wednesday night.
“If the Prime Minister wants a new Cabinet Secretary, he needs to start from scratch. Due diligence is vitally important. The Prime Minister has recent bitter experience of doing the due diligence too late. It would be an unnecessary tragedy to repeat that mistake.”
McDonald also said that he had tried to get in touch with figures within No10 to raise his case, but had “not had a response”.
Antonia RomeoThe comments drew stinging criticism from former senior mandarins, who suggested McDonald had become too attracted to the limelight.
“Whatever the accusations levelled at Ms Romeo have been cleared with her having no case to answer,” a former permanent secretary, who worked closely with both Romeo and McDonald, told The i Paper.
“Simon had disliked Antonia ever since she was sent to New York by [then Cabinet Secretary] Jeremy Heywood against his wishes. He was really, really aggrieved by that decision. He believed he should have been the one to choose who got such a plum job in New York.
“He played a central role in bringing down Boris Johnson [after partygate] by saying Johnson was lying, but what was striking was how much McDonald really enjoyed being in the spotlight, when a former civil servant really shouldn’t. And it’s the same here. It’s absolutely outrageous.”
Romeo ‘a strong choice’
A separate former Treasury and No10 official insisted Romeo would be a strong choice as Cabinet Secretary.
“Simon McDonald’s right, she’s a loose cannon. But she’s also excellent. She’ll shake the place up,” the source said. “I mean, she managed to suck up to Liz Truss and also Keir Starmer. That’s hard right?”
The Prime Minister has been forced to embark on a major overhaul of his top team after he was accused of presiding over a “boy’s club” in No10 in the wake of the Mandelson scandal.
The handling of the crisis has seen the departure of his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, his director of communications Tim Allan and now Wormald as his Cabinet Secretary.
Each could be replaced by an all-women outfit, with Vidhya Alekson and Jill Cuthbertson currently stepping up as his joint chiefs of staff, Sophie Nazemi acting up as Director of Communications and Romeo expected to be appointed as Cabinet Secretary.
In a statement, Wormald, said it had been an “honour and a privilege to serve as a civil servant for the past 35 years, and a particular distinction to lead the Service as Cabinet Secretary”.
“I want to place on record my sincere thanks to the extraordinary civil servants, public servants, ministers, and advisers I have worked with. Our country is fortunate to have such dedicated individuals devoted to public service, and I wish them every success for the future.”
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