It was time, Keir Starmer said, for a “complete re-wiring of the British state”. But in the very same announcement he unveiled Chris Wormald, the epitome of a safe, low-key career government official, as his new chief civil servant. Hardly the man for a hard reset. So which one is it?
The answer, Starmer and his team hope, will be both. They are betting on Wormald, the new cabinet secretary, to be a quiet and loyal radical, unpicking the impasses of Whitehall in an effective and consensual way, rather than via a Dominic Cummings-like messy revolution.
