Mehdi Hasan (Huffington Post) draws attention to the Cabinet Secretary's apparent role in deciding policy: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/03/jeremy-heywood_n_3538983.html?1372847568
He quotes Paul Flynn MP as saying: "Civil servants such as Heywood... have become politicized..."
Paul Flynn is wrong.
Senior civil servants (and most of all the Cabinet Secretary) have not "become" politicized, they have ALWAYS been political figures, unaccountable and unattributable and wielding enormous power in every Whitehall department.
As soon as you start to research political history in the post-war period you can see this - often it seems that the Cabinet Secretary is as important as the Prime Minister.
Even in Mehdi Hasan's own article we can see an example of this when the Cabinet Secretary is quoted as saying: “This is not a two-year project or a five-year project. This is a 10-year project, a 20-year generational battle to beef up the economy... there is no alternative."
What is the Cabinet Secretary doing planning ten year projects and twenty year generational battles?
This is why governments change and yet the policies stay the same - to the anger and disillusionment of both the Labour and Conservative parties.
Sir Jeremy Heywood's biography (from Wikipedia):
"...promoted to be the Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999. He stayed in this position until 2003, when he left the civil service in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry where it emerged that Heywood claimed to have never minuted meetings in the Prime Ministerial offices about Dr David Kelly, a job he was required to do. He emerged to become the Managing Director of the UK Investment Banking Division at Morgan Stanley where he became embroiled in the Southern Cross Scandal that almost saw 30,000 elderly people being made homeless. Upon Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister in 2007, Heywood returned to government as Head of Domestic Policy and Strategy at the Cabinet Office... On 11 October 2011 it was announced that Heywood would replace Sir Gus O'Donnell as the Cabinet Secretary..."
Is this, one wonders, Britain's real prime minister?
He quotes Paul Flynn MP as saying: "Civil servants such as Heywood... have become politicized..."
Paul Flynn is wrong.
Senior civil servants (and most of all the Cabinet Secretary) have not "become" politicized, they have ALWAYS been political figures, unaccountable and unattributable and wielding enormous power in every Whitehall department.
As soon as you start to research political history in the post-war period you can see this - often it seems that the Cabinet Secretary is as important as the Prime Minister.
Even in Mehdi Hasan's own article we can see an example of this when the Cabinet Secretary is quoted as saying: “This is not a two-year project or a five-year project. This is a 10-year project, a 20-year generational battle to beef up the economy... there is no alternative."
What is the Cabinet Secretary doing planning ten year projects and twenty year generational battles?
This is why governments change and yet the policies stay the same - to the anger and disillusionment of both the Labour and Conservative parties.
Sir Jeremy Heywood's biography (from Wikipedia):
"...promoted to be the Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999. He stayed in this position until 2003, when he left the civil service in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry where it emerged that Heywood claimed to have never minuted meetings in the Prime Ministerial offices about Dr David Kelly, a job he was required to do. He emerged to become the Managing Director of the UK Investment Banking Division at Morgan Stanley where he became embroiled in the Southern Cross Scandal that almost saw 30,000 elderly people being made homeless. Upon Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister in 2007, Heywood returned to government as Head of Domestic Policy and Strategy at the Cabinet Office... On 11 October 2011 it was announced that Heywood would replace Sir Gus O'Donnell as the Cabinet Secretary..."
Is this, one wonders, Britain's real prime minister?
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