When I was a Minister I understood that I had been appointed to office but that did not mean I was as many say “ in power” . The change from being an Executive Chairman of a large quoted industrial company to being a “junior” Minister was an even bigger jolt than I had been expecting.
My world changed from having to be very careful with everything I said because my word was writ in my company, to having to plot and plan every change I wanted to make to get anything I said incorporated as departmental practice and government policy.I had to ensure I had cleared my lines with the Secretary of State, who did trust me to take command of my specified Ministerial responsibilities. I had to get across to officials it was vexatious and pointless going behind my back to the S of S to change or undermine my decisions.
I had to battle to stop officials trying to turn departmental decisions into matters of debate with other departments, as a few were up to trying to stop things by an external intervention. I had to follow up everything we had agreed to make sure it happened in a timely way, as delay was always a good means to block a Minister.
In some cases I had to persuade the Permanent Secretary to take action, as much was about the training, motivation and deployment of staff. Councillors have more power over the selection, deployment and remuneration of their officials than Ministers have. Councillors can sack CEOs but effectively Ministers cannot sack Permanent Secretaries without the support of the PM who will usually be advised anyway by the Cabinet Secretary. Truss’s sacking of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury was one of her worst blunders and added to the force of the establishment push back to her policy.
I found there were some very good officials. Key to success was getting the Permanent Secretary to allow some talent to work on your Ministerial priorities. It was crucial to success to know exactly you wanted to do and to have thought through the detail of how it could be done. I always wrote my own speeches and drafted crucial parts of documents central to a policy I wanted to avoid confusion or dilution.
I found that if you were always polite and thoughtful about your officials you could persuade enough of them that things could be done better.The civil service does more with much more money as its mantra. My mantra is faster, better cheaper. You could get a success by showing them how. Most people do prefer being associated with success than with failure, A Minister has to be good enough to cut through a failing culture of poor quality and more money, to deliver some success for the department he is meant to lead .
October 7, 2025
I was hoping for the article to continue by stating who if any of the current crop of MPs do have the required qualities. I think it is not at all obvious that any have.
October 7, 2025
Hard for Sir John to comment on the prowess of current ministers whom he does not generally know and hasn’t worked with.
What strikes me about today’s note is the apparent distain some Civil Servants had for elected MPs/ministers. It is shocking that some staff would work against their “boss”. How is it acceptable for unelected staff to delay or undermine a Minister’s instruction? It gets to the heart of the problems of our State.
October 7, 2025
@ PeterB “How is it acceptable for unelected staff to delay or undermine a Minister’s instruction?” – normally justified by the belief of those staff in the virtue of what they are doing, reinforced by the view that “almost all government policy is wrong” as Sir Humphrey Appleby once said.
October 7, 2025
I doubt too many younger MPs would have the management experience (and patience) that Sir John is describing. The Senior “Servants” also know that time is on their side. They just have to stall and await the next re-shuffle. In the private sector you can act more directly, bringing in your own management team or (given a headcount reduction) put the poor performers at the top of the list.
I was parachuted into a UK role once where my predecessor was well connected and considered unsackable. I’d worked for my boss at another company and he wanted rid of this guy. So he lavished praise on him and encouraged the US to promote him to Europe. It took me two years to sort out the mess he’d left his department in.
There are many ways to skin a cat but (as Sir John has so well explained) but unfortunately the cards are stacked against any new manager going up against an organisation that is deeply rooted in doing things its own way.
October 7, 2025
From this article it is not clear what the ‘same excuses’ are.
It sets out the sort of issues that bedevilled Jim Hacker in ‘Yes Minister’.
Maybe the civil service needs to be overhauled, with fewer, more productive staff? Individual politicians having to box clever around those who are there to implement policy does not seem to be an ideal way of working.
October 7, 2025
Good Morning,
My goodness, what a depressing read; if it was this bad when Sir J was in office, how much worse is it today?
Checks and reviews of new policy is one thing, but to deliberately delay, or worse, frustrate a minister’s intentions is unacceptable. in these perilous times, there needs to be a more constructive management ethos in Government.
October 7, 2025
In his talks about what needs to be done, David Starkey says that the UK now has government of the blob, by the blob, for the blob. The “people” do not figure in it at all. Furthermore he argues that the sovereignty of Parliament has been fundamentally undermined by the Blairite reforms and subsequently endorsed by the Tories (Cameron describing himself as the “heir to Blair”). Cummings has said that cabinet meetings are all pre-scripted, including the conclusions, by the blob (civil servants). It is Potemkin village style cabinet. The situation today must be much worse than that described by Sir John above in his day as a Minister.
October 7, 2025
This is no way to run a serious country. We urgently need a better way of running the civil service.
October 7, 2025
How many “good enough” ministers and prime ministers have we actually had over the last 50 years? Is it even in double figures.
They usually care not what they spend nor what value (if any) they deliver. They go along with the group think for an easy life and care about salary, pension, “working” from home and a nice convenient office. So much of what they do delivers negative value Net Zero, the Covid Lockdowns and Covid “vaccines”, road blocking, HS2, the counterproductive wars… as happy putting in speed humps, bus lanes, bike lanes and road blocks as they are removing them.
I see that the halfwits in the Labour Party want to bring back the disaster of Hip Packs for house sales. This will make things worse as it did last time. They should scrap the EPC too that they halfwitted Tories kept. More red tape and this more good news for lawyers and other largely parasitic workers though.
October 7, 2025
At some point the contract needs to become binding but for this to happen you need to have done all the checks, have you mortgage and funding in place and if in a chain (and need that money that needs to be binding too.
What would help is bridging finance, lower taxes, relaxed planning, more houses or fewer people wanting one and faster easier mortgages – alas bridging (and mortgages) are now so bound up in red tape now they are v. expensive and rather slow and hard to obtain. Government, as usual, is the problem not the answer.
October 7, 2025
I’ve helped my sons purchase and sell their homes over the years and it’s become more and more complicated. You can (and should) employ a solicitor to assist you but this doesn’t neccessarily simplify things. The last property had a solicitors ‘Report on Ttile’ that ran to 572 close typed pages. I did actually read it but I can guarentee that my son didn’t…
October 8, 2025
Indeed it is absurd more and more parasitic job creation. Even if they read it all do they take in a few bits that are important! They are usually all about protecting the lawyers from negligence claims!
October 7, 2025
How many ministers are actually trying to do as promised and represent the public and how many are mainly acting for themselves, their promotions or next jobs, an easier life, taking instruction from the blog, their old “consultancy” fee payers…
KIER Starmer’s policies are certainly a gift to lawyers and other essentially parasitic and largely unproductive and anti-productive workers with his endless red tape for employers, landlords, house buyers, net zero lunacy… the Tories were bad enough!
October 7, 2025
Whilst we were in the EU politicians could swan about with impunity as all the laws were made in Brussels
Anything detrimental to our wellbeing was excused as following a Brussels directive. This can be seen as a result of the Large Combustion Directive. All our efficient coal fired plants were issued with notice to close down by a given date. Westminster under the uniparty slavishly followed this Directive, largely ignored by other countries. Result, we are no longer self sufficient in power generation and are at the mercy of hostile states particularly France.
Due to the capitulation of Boris, Sunak and now 2TK we continue to be under the cosh of Brussels.
The civil service will do their damndest to ensure we don’t stray from this path.
We need politicians who will ensure the blob do as instructed or be given their marching orders
Forfeiting their gold plated pension would concentrate their minds.
October 7, 2025
The whole country got an insight into the obstructive blocking tactics used by the Civil Service back in the early 1980s, thanks to Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister.
Since then, the Not-a-Conservative-Party has had approximately 30 years in Government and was therefore able to do something about it.
It didn’t. The next one must because we cannot continue with a situation where, regardless of how the British people vote, the Civil Service takes it upon itself to block policies the left-wing Mandarins don’t support and Ministers let them get away with it …. either deliberately or because they’re simply not up to the job.
October 7, 2025
any decent reforming political party which genuinely hopes to bring in large scale reforms needs to plan for the inertia of the state. the power in the hands of the senior public sector layers which reinforces their “group think” needs dealing with. the way the senior layers of the public sector hire each other needs dealing with. the networks wielding power in the senior layers of the public sector need dealing with.
a lot of people say similar things Dom Cummings, David Starkey, etc have been saying this for a long time.
one of the things the second Trump term got correct was having a lot of presidential orders ready to sign from the beginning, and decent people lined up to fill roles in senior parts of the public sector, the UK political reformers need to adopt similar approaches, get executive orders ready to sign.
October 7, 2025
The Metropolitan Police is consulting on a proposal to add organizations like Freemasonry to the list of “declarable associations’ which could be perceived as creating conflicts of loyalty
Freemasons swear oaths to be loyal to their fellow brethren, which supersede their oath of loyalty to the crown and to uphold the law impartially.
Unsurprisingly, the Police Federation has voiced strident opposition, arguing the proposal could infringe on officers’ human rights to privacy and freedom of association – and that it is unnecessary
Recently, a series of very good YouTube mini-documentaries describing the long history of (allegations against ed) in the Met, involving officers belonging to secret societies, have been released.( further words dropped. I have no idea what is in these videos.Any serious allegations need evidence and independent investigation )
For decades, allegations of institutional corruption have been made against the Met; we suffer a very high level of organised crime in this country. Many police officers feel that membership of secret societies is incompatible with policing. If the Met refuses to bar officers who have this conflict of interest, then it’s time the Home Secretary forces such change. I suggest that Shabana Mahmood begins by looking at the hundreds of miscarriages of justice that have come to light in recent years.
October 7, 2025
You often post stuff that is incorrect SG
Your second paragraph is a very good example of this.
PS
Masonry isn’t secret.
Do an Internet search or buy various books and read up about it.
October 7, 2025
Sir John
Good analysis as always
To many of us have become dinosaurs in the world of rulers and dictators. Service is no longer warranted when personal ideology is the push.
I am now of the mind the top civil servants should be contracted to the same time scale as those they are supposed to serve. Seemingly not ideal but the Civil Service from the outside looking in has been infiltrated by ideologues with their own political agendas, they no longer serve, they are no longer there for the stability of the whole. They no longer manage in the interest of the Country but serve personal beliefs – so have become ‘political’, as such their appointment should be on the same time restricted basis. That way they will serve the Country, the Government and the voted for Minister who has to answer for all actions taken. They move back to serving their political boss above personal self-esteem.
It’s a ‘crappie’ idea, but, the ‘Blob’ is forcing a change because they are changing how things work.
October 7, 2025
Any new government that is tasked with repairing the mess left by Labour will have to urgently write new laws by which elected politicians can sack officials, right to the top of the civil service. Employment law will have to be amended in order to avoid them getting rid of ministers because of bullying, when perhaps the minister raises his voice after becoming frustrated with incompetence and delay. The shadow Home Secretary suggested doubling the budget of the department in order to speed up immigration control. He needs to sack half of them for the delays and get rid of the political judges while halving legal aid for KCs like Hermer and Starmer.
October 7, 2025
More confirmation that ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister’ were political documentaries and not satire.
October 7, 2025
The present government is exonerated though surely because recall Sir Keir plucked from the obscurity of the civil service Sue Gray to be his chief of staff, applying her expertise and experience to make sure government overcame the sort of issues you describe (at least until she was sacked in the October following the election).
October 7, 2025
The reason “too many politicians let us down and use the same excuses” is because they’re not in control. It is the Civil Service, quangos, regulators, “ofs” and judiciary who are deciding policies and making the laws very much like the EU Commission with both the EU Parliament and our Parliament just rubber stamping their decisions. Hence when the colour of the Uniparty changes at a GE nothing actually changes as Parliament is not in control.
October 7, 2025
Based on my experience of rescuing failing companies in the Private Sector these were some of the basic failings which can be almost universally found in other organisations especially the Public Sector where they hide behind an out of control mantra of “Need to know” privacy excuses :-
Out of date, conflicting and confused Aims and objectives, often misunderstood and misinterpreted.
Personality clashes due to strong and weaker management.
Over manning especially if several trades union bodies are rivals.
Over controls and under controlled areas creating out of control wasteful expenditure.
Lack of training, especially in Financial awareness and costs to the business.
Today DEI training and wokeness would be at the detriment of business priority.
So too would Reputation Management and PR be given priority at the expense of Security, especially Cyber Security due to lack of awareness thereof by too management.
It is no wonder that Elon Musk IMHO basically bulldozed certain USA Govt Depts as they must have been so “lost in space” so to speak that they couldn’t be saved, being totally detached from what was needed for gov’t objectives.
No doubt the Civil Service fortress here will have to be challenged after several hundred years of ingrained Self Service.
They will eventually be unable to compete with AI on Supercomputers to reduce their obstructions like the centuries of Barnacles grown on the Ship of State. It will be interesting to see, given their inability to raise productivity even with massive expenditure and investment in computers track record of 50years, half a Century!
October 7, 2025
“I found that if you were always polite and thoughtful about your officials you could persuade enough of them that things could be done better.”
I wonder if that would still be the case, or are officials more pigheaded and opinionated than back then?
Perhaps you set up a training consultancy for would-be Ministers? I think your experience would be valuable for anyone replacing Labour.
October 7, 2025
What John Redwood describes (I am sure accurately – the same happens in local government) is absurd in a democracy and means that elected governments can’t get much done. It is no good expecting Ministers to be exceptionally high calibre and ‘having to follow up everything we had agreed’ as most Ministers doubtless prefer an easier life even if they are (and few are) capable of effectively challenging their officials.
The sensible answer is to do as the Americans do which is Presidents appoint their own partisan top officials and change those of the previous administration when they take over. Then officials as well as politicians would know they are only in for a few years and become motivated to achieve something while they are in rather than continue complacently with the same notions for ever more, irrespective of the complexion of the government they are supposedly serving.
October 7, 2025
Mrs Thatcher has been given much credit for changing things for the better, however you were her policy advisor.Does that mean that you should take a lot of credit for that as a junior minister?
Are you supporting Kemi in Manchester or have you travelled over to reform?
October 7, 2025
“I found that if you were always polite and thoughtful about your officials you could persuade enough of them that things could be done better.” Yes, 100% yes. My experience of driving change in a public sector organisation exactly mirrors this. If you can make the argument for doing things better and logically demonstrate that risks are manageable a spark of motivation ignites within the audience and change happens. I particularly enjoyed the moment when the die-hard refuseniks who were opposed to change on principle (there were just two or three of them) suddenly found that they no longer commanded an audience among the various teams which were involved as the majority collectively decided to get on with implementing a good project which had convinced them.
October 8, 2025
“Truss’s sacking of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury was one of her worst blunders”
I personally welcomed it as a refreshingly bold move. Many Permanent Secretaries hide behind their unsackability while playing political games. The word (and status) ‘Permanent’ ought to be removed from their title.
What did for Truss was the fact that she was elected by the Party Membership, and the wet Tory MPs were implacably determined to get rid of her. Her unforced error was in not making any serious moves to cut state expenditure (including benefits) when lowering tax rates. That alarmed the bond hawks, and a generation of over-borrowers used to low mortgage rates was alarmed by a borrowing and mortgage rate increase those of us inured to the bumpy ride of the 1980s and 1990s would have not even noticed. The BoE also did what it could to cut her off at the knees by selling off gilts in the teeth of an expansionist budget, causing a near-collapse of several pension funds – a dangerous problem the Governor had largely created back when he was FCS supervisor, but now blamed on Truss.
It is quite a challenge for any Tory PM who is right of centre: a left-wing Parliamentary Party on both sides of the House, a left-wing civil service, a left-wing judiciary and establishment, and a left-wing monarch. Maybe Hayek needs to return to earth to advise us.
Reply I advised her to cut spending and offered her options to do so. I warned about the Bank of England and the Pension funds undermining the bond market.I told her not to sack senior officials as the official machine would retaliate. Sacking the permanent Head of the Treasury but failing to put in someone she could trust and rely on was disastrous. Conservative MPs had no power to remove her for the first year . She removed herself which was the final disastrous let down for the majority of Conservative MPs who had voted for her in the final ballot.
October 8, 2025
IMHO After narrowly surviving the Brighton bombing I personally think Mrs Thatcher suffered some kind of PTSD which is understandable when suddenly you discover how this affects you. Whilst she demonstrated her great courage to the world externally, she was never the same after losing some excellent colleagues. Very sad she felt unable to carry on both for herself, the conservatives and more importantly Britain and even the world (defying Russia especially).
Reply I was with Margaret the night of the bombing as we worked through until 15 minutes before the bomb. I met up with her next morning to help revise the speech. You are completely wrong. We were both very sad but not mentally damaged by the murders.
October 8, 2025
My sincere apologies Sir John for my misunderstanding and appreciate your correction and both your serious efforts to carry on with the business of government under such circumstances. Many thanks indeed for your lifelong sterling service on our behalf. Really much appreciated.
As the saying goes “A lot of good can come out of a lot of bad” and Mrs T has a great legacy in changing Britain for good.
October 8, 2025
Just about the only department that operated at good efficiency in the latter Tory years was the freshly recruited Department of Trade. Many of the people came from outside the UK civil service: some even from abroad but with directly relevant experience in trade negotiations. They were aligned in motivation towards tieing up new trade deals, rather than trying to undermine the objective.
I suspect that restoring effectiveness to other departments and quangos will require similar fresh recruitment, with few officials of the ability that used to be a hallmark, and most determined to undermine anything that strays away from their leftist viewpoints.
October 8, 2025
I guess you feel better out of it