Barclay plays his cards in game of Downing Street chiefs
The lesson from last week’s newsletter: the subhead always wins
Let’s start with an almost-disclaimer. Last week’s Global Government Forum Substack post considered the potential for the prime minister’s new chief of staff Steve Barclay to catalyse a rewiring of the accountability of the UK state. Barclay took the post alongside his role in the Cabinet Office as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, creating a hybrid post that was the new seat of power in the plans to create a new Office of the Prime Minister.
As I set out, the rationale of Barclay’s appointment is therefore that he will bring his expertise of how the Cabinet Office works into the chief of staff role, and then be able to properly scope out the new OPM (I did include doubt in the subhead, so just to reiterate, always check the subhead!).
This week we saw some further developments about how this will work. In this week’s ministerial reshuffle, Barclay was given some assistance from Michael Ellis and Heather Wheeler as additional ministers in the department. This gives Barclay more time to dedicate to the role of chief of staff, and indicates this will be his priority.
It is still an interesting combination of responsibilities, and today we have seen some signs of how Barclay will manage them. In an article for the Sunday Telegraph, the minister highlights the unique nature of the posting.
“For my part, as both a cabinet minister and chief of staff, I will have a unique opportunity as both counsellor and driver. To liaise and listen; to advise but also to act, whether that’s in strengthening data analysis and understanding of issues across Whitehall or ironing out inefficiencies in delivery across government in order to make the centre of government work like the best-run companies.”
Such ambitions are longstanding in government of course, and while it could be that all they needed to unlock them was a beefed-up Office of the Prime Minister in the Cabinet Office, it seems unlikely. But it is good to have a metric of how we can judge the work of this new set up.
“Already, work is underway,” says Barclay. “With the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, and Samantha Jones, who has been brought in as acting No10 chief operating officer and permanent secretary with a wealth of public and private sector experience, I will be tackling the job of integrating the new Office of the Prime Minister more effectively with the Cabinet Office.”
It is also interesting to see Barclay use the article to set out what he calls the government’s “priority to restore a smaller state – both financially and in taking a step back from people's lives”.
He adds: "It's time to return to a more enabling approach. To trust the people, return power to communities, and free up business to deliver."
This is set out, though, after a paragraph where he highlights that the UK spent £400bn fighting the pandemic. It is hard not to return to a state smaller than that one after the emergency has passed, but aside from seeming to confirm the days of free lateral flow tests are numbered, there is not a lot of information about what this means. Worth watching what that means too.
This new structure in No.10 is clearly taking a little bit of time to form, and it is in such moments when the future of public service delivery can be decided, as the exact breakdown of new roles is decided. Whatever we end up with is definitely going to be different from what came before. A chief of staff in Downing Street would never have written a newspaper article before. That alone indicates where the power may be heading.
Links and thoughts
The work to create the OPM was highlighted former prime minister John Major in his speech to the Institute for Government. Major said that its creation “sounds a little like a gimmick” in a speech to the Institute for Government last week, which majored on (sorry) what he called the threat to the UK’s democracy.
We also published on globalgovernmentforum.com this week a report from the Responsive Government webinar from last month, looking at how governments responded to the pressures of the pandemic. Read it in full here: ‘Bursts and explosions of creativity’ and being risk smart: lessons from responsive governments.
Another article this week also touched on how governments respond to crisis, this time from the financial side of the ledger, and considered whether the state can keep dealing with so many unprecedented events. Always in the front line: the impossible demands of crisis response.