It looks like the experiment is over.
The job of Head of the Home Civil Service is being re-integrated with Cabinet Secretary and No.10 Downing Street PS. There’s also going to be a “CEO” who will perhaps be recruited from the private sector, although no names that aren’t civil servants have been put forward. But this job doesn’t have any permanent secretaries reporting to it, so it will be pretty harmless, as is the “strategy unit” run by a Johnson relative.
The original reshuffle was quite radical, aiming at de-emphasising the core civil service, importing the psuedo-private sector property guy Kerslake, and that hardy cliché, “delivery”. It looks like Heywood won.
It’s been a good week for the Blob, which is nothing but a good thing.
Maybe it was a good week for The Blob but Cameron hasn’t denounced Gove’s policies, has he? Gove has been put out of sight because there’s a general Election coming up, but if the Tories win you may well find them again handing public assets over to their for friends for 125 years at a peppercorn rent.