Many civil servants breathed a sigh of relief after seeing the back of the Conservatives in July – a hoped-for end to long-running pay disputes, the looming axe of job cuts and a sense of overall chaos.
The past decade has seen a churn of ministers, with three different prime ministers in 2022 alone and 67 cabinet appointments. The civil service endured being dismissed as “the blob” by ministers and Jacob Rees-Mogg pushing for up to 90,000 jobs to be cut.
