Sir Keir Starmer is hardly the first prime minister to want to make sure they are surrounded by a team at No 10 that is effective; usually, and with little friction, the civil service ensures that that is indeed the case. Many an incoming premier has, in due course, replaced their closest civil servants with people they know and trust better.
The wiring of the Downing Street and cabinet office machine is tangled and confusing to any novice, but – apart from the convulsions caused during the reign of Boris Johnson and his adviser Dominic Cummings – any changes to it can usually be accommodated. So it is with the latest change, the departure of Sir Keir’s principal private secretary, Nin Pandit, who had only been in post for 10 months.
