Senior civil servants have been asking whether Simon Case can survive at the top of Whitehall for almost as long as he has been in post.
From his oversight of No 10 during the Partygate scandal to his role in the Richard Sharp affair, Case’s name has cropped up in almost every controversy to have dogged Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak over the last two years. When a top official repeatedly becomes the story, more often than not that means their days in the job are numbered.
“The common thread is that his advice does not appear to be robust enough,” says one former permanent secretary.
These doubts are shared by a number of senior former Whitehall figures who say Case has not shown enough backbone in standing up to his Conservative political masters when the likes of Johnson have tried to push the limits of constitutional propriety.
A former royal courtier, Case was considered by permanent secretary colleagues not to have enough experience to run the whole home civil service when appointed by Johnson in 2020.
A string of episodes since then have only added to disapproval of his leadership within the civil service. These include failing to stand up to Truss when she sacked the Treasury’s permanent secretary Tom Scholar, allowing Nadhim Zahawi to become chancellor when his tax affairs were under investigation, and the leak of chummy messages to the former health secretary Matt Hancock. In these, Case described Johnson in one message as a “nationally distrusted figure”, and referred to Sunak’s opposition to Covid restrictions on businesses as “going bonkers”.
Other incidents include his role in agreeing that Johnson could get a secret loan guarantee from his distant cousin Sam Blyth and allowing the prime minister’s friend Richard Sharp to play a role in facilitating the loan despite his application to become BBC chair.
And, dating as far back as April 2021, there were questions over Case’s moves to smooth Johnson’s path to getting loans for work to be carried out on the No 11 flat, a controversy known as Wallpapergate.
However, the latest controversy is one that has even greater cross-party political implications: ordering an inquiry into whether Sue Gray broke civil service rules by talking to Labour about becoming Keir Starmer’s chief of staff while still a senior official in the Cabinet Office. His critics say this is an overreaction at the behest of Tory ministers, especially since he has pushed for Gray to get a lengthy cooling-off period before joining Labour.
No former civil servant who has worked alongside Case has been willing to go on the record so far, although Sir David Normington, a former permanent secretary of the Home Office, accused him of “failing to stand up for the values of the civil service” over the Scholar affair. This leaves Anthony Seldon, the political historian who has written several definitive books on prime ministers, as the weightiest figure so far calling on Case to go.
Speaking to the Times, Seldon said: “I believe that the civil service has never been weaker, more demoralised or less powerfully led. The country needs a strong, effective Whitehall, as recent policy failures and errors show. The civil service is a team without a captain. It is crying out for modernisation and change, but the head of the civil service lacks the authority or the experience to do it.”
No 10 and cabinet ministers publicly rallied round Case on Tuesday, expressing their full confidence in him. But behind the scenes, there are signs that Case has been sidelined by Sunak compared with his influence under Johnson, and persistent rumours in Whitehall that he could move on after the coronation.
As a former senior royal aide, his role in navigating the constitutional complexities of the queen’s death and transition to King Charles’s rule has been appreciated within the government.
However, there is also an acknowledgment that his leadership of the Cabinet Office in particular has fallen short when it comes to workforce management, morale and relations with ministers.
“He’s responsible for leading the institution. And it’s his job to deal with these problems with morale that are arising,” said one expert on Whitehall. “Anonymous criticism of Simon Case is not in short supply.”
It is clear that confidence in Case among civil servants is low, despite his allies briefing newspapers that the overwhelming majority are behind him.
His future, though, is likely come down to questions of politics. Sunak has just a year to 18 months to go before another election, and may decide he does not want the upheaval of putting a new figure in charge of his civil service.
After that, Case is unlikely to keep his job in a new administration – especially a Labour one in which Gray has any influence.
