You need to be cleverer than most of civil servants in order to understand where in their practices you can reform. Cummings's ideas are shortsighted and he is also not clever enough to do this. TBH, I doubt that you'll find anyone ideal for the post. I'd take on a consultant like Rory Stuart for this.
The military is perenially badly managed and financially a bottomless pit. They would do better with less money, concentrating on paying staff better instead of building aircraft carriers or buying expensive american F35s to impress nobody. Half of their money would be better spent on international development aids to reduce worldwide famine and extreme poverty.
It's not their fault if they claim what they are promised. You have to punish those who make promises to buy votes. I would jail them if I could. I would require that all manifestos be fact checked before they can be distributed.
It's just not possible.
The government’s aims are bold, but they want to galvanise the civil servants who implement the government’s agenda.
www.bbc.co.uk
The big question is, 'Will Sir Keir fire the civil servants who fail?
The usual habit when a civil servant has become so much of an embarrassment that their abject failure can no longer be ignored, is to promote them sideways. Politicians have been saying this for decades. Some real failures are even moved up the hierarchy or given a gong and early retirement. There is a large canon of writing on this subject for anyone who wants to explore it. Now Starmer's ministers are saying it.
We must re-organise the civil service. I'd even consider making the roles temporary and tied to an incumbent government for the higher power roles - a bit like the American system. The 'Adminstration' moves out when a President leaves office. Why not for the top jobs?
During Covid we saw (under Cummings) a variety of experts brought into the civil service and they were given serious executive power. People such as Kate Bingham who drove the very successful Vaccine Task Force agenda. They left after the job was done.
It is to the considerable detriment of the Civil Service and the country, that it almost exclusively promotes internally to influential roles and that those people are constantly moved from one role to a completely different one every couple of years, as if say Defence needed the same skills and experience as Education, or Health.
It is completely mad, and many politicians have been complaining about the obstructionist nature of the bureaucracy for about a hundred years - but still no massive reform.
