Who might run the government for Sir Keir Starmer if he gets into Number 10 this year? It’s a question that has speculation running wild in Whitehall, the home of the civil service.
If he becomes prime minister, Starmer is widely expected to appoint a new Cabinet Secretary. While the office of Cabinet Secretary is relatively unknown to the public compared to the Great Offices of State, its holder wields enormous power in government, directing the entirety of the civil service machine and implementing the prime minister’s will across departments.
One name keeps coming up: Olly Robbins, who has also reportedly been telling friends that he would like the top job in Whitehall.
“I have nothing nice to say about him”
At 6 foot 3 inches tall, Robbins struck a distinctive figure in his last government job as Theresa May’s advisor on European Union affairs during the Brexit negotiations.
He has a wealth of experience in the civil service with a CV that ranges from the prime minister’s office to the Treasury to the national security secretariat.
Keir Starmer seems keen to surround himself with experienced civil servants. He has already poached Cabinet Office veteran Sue Gray to serve as his chief of staff (Gray and Robbins worked together in government under Sir Tony Blair).
A high achiever with a Left-wing student past, Robbins drew allegations of pro-EU bias from Brexiteers when he worked with May on the UK’s EU departure. But perhaps he would be a shrewd choice for an incoming Labour government that wishes to broker a closer relationship with the EU.
If Starmer settled on Robbins as his Cabinet Secretary, it would be a controversial pick. When asked about rumours of a Robbins return, a senior Brexiteer who worked closely with him in government told the Standard: “I have nothing nice to say about him”.
So who is Olly Robbins?
In the thick of it
At the peak of the Brexit wars, when he served as Theresa May’s Brexit adviser, Robbins was described as “the bête noire of Brexiteers”. Some hardliners accused him of pro-EU or Remain bias because of his role in pursuing a Brexit deal that was not, in their opinion, sufficiently Brexit-y. Robbins was at May’s side as she negotiated her Brexit deal, but when it failed to win the support of the Commons and she resigned as prime minister, Robbins also left government.
He went into banking at Goldman Sachs and received a knighthood in May’s resignation honours. Alongside his work at Goldman, Sir Olly also took a prestigious job at the University of Oxford as the first Heywood Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government. The fellowship was named after former Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood.
He recently moved from Goldman to Hakluyt, the global strategic advisory firm, where he covers corporate clients in Europe and the Middle East.
But Robbins is not done with politics. In February 2023, he was one of several public figures to attend a summit on EU relations at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire. Other figures at the gathering included former EU commissioner Lord Mandelson, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary David Lammy and Michael Gove. Arch-Brexiteer Lord Frost claimed the Ditchley conference was part of a Remainer plot to undermine Brexit.
Oxford radical
It seems Robbins has always been fiercely political. At Oxford University from 1993 to 1996, Robbins studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) and was active in student politics. He served as a Treasurer of the Oxford Reform Club, a group that advocated for greater British integration into the European Union.
Liz Truss, now an ardent Brexiteer, was its vice president in 1995. She and Robbins were photographed together at a club meeting in the mid-1990s.
As a first year student in 1994, Robbins wrote an article in the Oxford Reform Club’s Progressive Thinker magazine titled “Russia – revolving again?” In the piece, he set out to discredit the generally held view “which sees communism in Russia as ‘the experiment which failed’”.
“The Russian state,” argued Robbins, “has endured more than any other nation in the twentieth century, and has achieved more too.”
He claimed that the Bolshevik regime was only as oppressive, if not less, than the Tsarist empire that had preceded it and suggested that higher living standards in the Soviet Union were a clear trade off.
“More Russians can read than Britons, there are almost no homeless in Moscow, unlike London, and Russian medicinal science is an acknowledged world leader in many fields,” wrote Robbins.
'Commie Geographers'
At Oxford, Robbins attended the traditionally centre-Left Hertford College. In the New Labour years, when Robbins worked for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, he was one of the so-called “Hertford Four” – the four civil servants who controlled intelligence access to the Prime Minister and who had all attended the Oxford college.
Alongside Robbins there was foreign policy adviser Tom Fletcher, Cabinet Office director of security and intelligence Ciarin Martin and Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood.
Because of the Left-wing reputation of their alma mater, the quadrumvirate were suspected of bias by some.
Hertford College’s reputation was summed up by Boris Johnson in 2018, when he was asked about the Hertford Four by the BBC. “They’re all commie geographers,” quipped Johnson.
Fletcher, a contemporary of Robbins at Oxford, told the Evening Standard: “From my observation, Olly is a civil servant to his fingertips, is relentlessly non-partisan, has a terrifying intellect and appetite for work, and knows as well as anyone how the machine works. His discretion over his most recent stint at the centre has been striking."
"I assume any serious government would try to convince him back into service in some way. But I have absolutely no idea if he imagines himself in the Cab Sec role, there is of course a very long list of outstanding potential candidates, and I get the distinct impression he is thriving in the world beyond Whitehall.”
If and when
How likely is Robbins to take over? The incumbent Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who recently returned from long-term medical leave, is unlikely to carry on for long in post if there is a change of government.
When Case was chosen by Boris Johnson to replace Sir Mark Sedwill in 2020, at the age of 41, he was widely seen as a political appointment with insufficient experience.
His authority as the country’s top civil servant was further diminished last year by the disclosure of his pandemic-era WhatsApp messages by the Daily Telegraph.
In exchanges with then-health secretary Matt Hancock, Case appeared to revel in the exercise of emergency powers. He was also accused of involving himself in political game-playing.
The Cabinet Office has also been criticised at evidence sessions of the Covid-19 inquiry for supposed poor performance during the pandemic. Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to Boris Johnson, called the department a “dumpster fire”.
If Labour win the election, Case is only expected to remain in post for a short time to oversee the transition of power to a party that has not held government for 14 years.
