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Boris Johnson Picks Former Royal Aide to Run U.K. Civil Service

Boris Johnson Picks Former Royal Aide to Run U.K. Civil Service

Prime Minister Boris Johnson chose a former aide to Prince William to take charge of the U.K.’s 450,000 permanent government officials as he seeks to overhaul the way the country is run.

With the government suffering a slide in the polls amid criticism of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Simon Case will take up the role of Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service on Sept. 9.

The appointment is a radical move by the prime minister, who led the U.K. out of the European Union in January and is seeking to revive and reshape the British economy, which is in deep recession.

Case has never run a government department and, at 41, is the youngest person to take on the role since its first holder. But he knows his way around Downing Street, having served as a senior official for previous prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May. He also worked on some of the most complex and difficult parts of the Brexit negotiations, as well as the 2012 London Olympics.

Until the pandemic hit, Case had been working for Prince William, but was called back to government temporarily to help coordinate its faltering response to the outbreak. The prime minister personally called the prince to tell him he needed Case to take over the role of cabinet secretary permanently.

Johnson and his aides, chiefly his most senior adviser Dominic Cummings, were dismayed by the way some parts of the civil service handled the health crisis and have vowed to speed up their plans to reform the system. The exit of Mark Sedwill as cabinet secretary, amid reports of a rift with Johnson’s top team in June, created the vacancy that Case will fill.

Johnson won a big majority in December’s election with a pledge to “level up” the economy in deprived and forgotten parts of the U.K. He and Cummings want to revolutionize the civil service to make it more responsive to the government’s political leaders.

Alongside Sedwill, a clutch of other top civil servants have left their posts since Johnson became prime minister amid rows over ministers’ management style and a fiasco over the government’s handling of school exams.

On Tuesday, Case sought to smooth over the cracks, paying tribute to Sedwill and praising the civil service for its “hard work” in “unprecedented times.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.