Ex-cabinet secretary condemns Starmer’s sacking of Chris Wormald as ‘shabby’ – UK politics live | Politics

Good morning. Keir Starmer is heading off to the Munich Security Conference today, where he will no doubt be glad to be able to put UK domestic politics behind him for a bit. Patrick Wintour has a good article here about what is on the agenda.

But, as Starmer gets ready to leave, he is still facing criticism over his decision to defenestrate the cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald. Here is our overnight story by Rowena Mason and Pippar Crerar.

It is not unusual for prime ministers to want to change people at the top of the civil service, and to replace them with individuals with whom they can establish a better working relationship. But there is not precendent for a PM ousting a cabinet secretary they personally appointed just over a year previously.

Gus O’Donnell, who was cabinet secretary for six years under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, was on the Today programme this morning and he said that the treatment of Wormald had been “shabby”. He said:

Where it shabby is the fact that we’ve got to this place and that they have briefed anonymously against the cabinet secretary, saying it’s not working.

They’ve been doing this for a long time. This is a process that this government, I’m afraid, [it’s] one of their biggest failings. You’ve seen it right from the start with Sue Gray, briefings against her, all the rest of it. This is the fundamental problem.

O’Donnell blamed the PM’s special advisers (or spads, as they are called) for the negative briefings. And he criticised Starmer for failing to stop this.

Really good spads [special advisers] are really useful. I’ve worked with Ed Balls, Alastair Campbell, Jonathan Powell. If they’re good, they understand their subject, they can make the the relationship between ministers and civil servants work a lot better.

Bad special advisers turn out to be second rate PR people. [They] can be disastrous. You saw in the run up to the budget; it was a complete omnishambles from a comms point of view, whatever you think about the economics of it.

So that’s where the prime minister must take responsibility and get a grip.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: The high court delivers its judgment on a claim that the Home Office’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action was unlawful.

Morning: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is on a visit in Scotland.

Noon: Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, attends the Attitude 101 awards celebrating trailblazers in the LGBTQ+ community.

Afternoon: Keir Starmer arrives at the Munich Security Conference.

And Kemi Badenoch is in Llandudno, where she is speaking at the Welsh Conservative conference.

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