The most powerful woman in Britain

0:00Support comes from wise, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. Your life is global, your money should be too. Some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers. Don't be fooled. Extra costs often hide in bloated exchange rates. Choose wise. You can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies. Count on the exchange rates that you'd usually see on Google. That's how millions save billions on hidden fees. Be smart, get wise, visit wise.com, season C's apply. Hello and welcome to Coffee House shots, the spectators' daily politics podcast. I'm Oscar Robinson, I'm joined today by Tim Shipman and James Heal. Now Tim, the headline of your piece in the magazine this week claims that Antonio Romero, the cabinet secretary, is the most powerful woman in Britain. Can you explain why? Oh, she's the cabinet secretary, which is always in a powerful position or it can be, depending on the person who occupies the post. I think this is probably the first article I've

1:03written solely about a cabinet secretary since Jeremy Hayward was around, which is kind of significant. Antonio Romero has gone in there. She's grabbed herself a seat in the outer office outside the Prime Minister's study. She has written her own job description, which has been signed off by two Prime Ministers. It was reported earlier this week that she is also working on plans to give herself legal powers to overall permanent secretaries in other government departments and sort of enshrine that in law. This looks on the face of it, a little bit like a personal power grab by Dame Antonio. She is a doer and someone who makes herself useful to her political masters and Andy Burnham needs a doer, frankly. I think everybody agrees that she's more significant, she's more in the loop. She is someone whose advice is listened to by politicians in a way that her Princess, Chris Wermold, never was. She's certainly the most significant cabinet secretary

2:05as far as we can see since Hayward. If she gets her way with these extra powers, she could at least on paper be the most powerful. Now power is a kind of, it's a bit like water, it sort of flows where it flows and in a sense it doesn't really matter what the formal rules are. But anyone who has watched, yes, Prime Minister knows the proximity to the action is the key to it. And most cabinet secretary has used to sit in an enormously grand office in 70 Whitehall, which, bluntly, by the time you've walked through the back corridors of Downing Street through the connecting door and do all that, it's probably a solid four, five, six minute walk to actually get there. It's a long way away. And even Jeremy Hayward was a long way away. He was obviously spent quite a lot of the time with Tony Blair and others in the seat of power. But this was a cabinet secretary who understands power and is exercising it. And why, what the peace tackles is, why is she doing

3:05beyond personal agron disment. I think the interesting thing is that the civil service kind of realize that they have got something to prove as well. The political class is very familiar with the rise of populism, reform and forage doing very well. And basically saying all the sort of big traditional parties have failed in government. And I think the civil service is very conscious that it is part of that problem and that it needs to get better at what it does. So, Dayman Tony has set up a review. What else? That's what Whitehall loves to do. But as you would also learn from yes, minister, yes, prime minister, you never set up a review unless you know what it wants to find. And I think we're getting a flavor of the kind of power as she wants to find. And the phrase she is using is that this is the last chance of being for the civil service. And bluntly, if they don't make official dumb work for Burnham and achieve what he wants, then I think they realize that Labour will lose power and that the next people through the door would likely be reform who have already announced that they wish to scrap the post of governance, so they could cherry and politicise the civil service. So, this is partly

4:10about delivering from the elected government to the day and it's partly about ask covering. James, I mean, a cabinet secretary with sort of bolstered powers could potentially put a lot of people's nose out of place in number 10. What do we know so far about the dynamic between Antonio Romero and Burnham and how happy that camp really is? Well, I think two things, one of which is from Tim's excellent reporting is that it's a pretty good dynamic. And second of all, you have the outcomes, which is, you know, by definition, and Burnham would not be empowering her if he did not think that he had the right man, one's good woman, for the job. And so I think that they very much think that to evolve power, to give away power, we must first accumulate it in one sense and then in order to give it away. I think every great dictator's ever been has promised the first and then failed to live in the second. But we shall see. I mean, Antonio Romero obviously was the longest serving permanent secretary at the time of her appointment. She would very much see the antithesis of Chris Wermald, her predecessor in the role. You've gone from a knee or to a tigger in one sense. She's promising a good game. She's talking about obviously out the relative of this review, but she's also got to obviously set up number 10 north as well. And I think Tim the right to say

5:15that this is the last chance of doing you've got two parts on the right, both of whom have different critiques. Danny Krueger very much shares the worldview of Dominic Cummings who said that the cabinet secretary is 100, attempting to give her 1000 times more powerful than almost all the cabinet in terms of getting things done and he wants to spit out that role. I think the reason for that is partly because actually it's two roles. It is the cabinet secretary, but also ahead of the home civil service. And effectively, you sometimes have cabinet secretaries who are torn between their responsibilities. They're often more of a servant as it were. They're actually the head of the civil service. And I think that can lead to an neglect sometimes of that kind of speaking to that mass institutional workforce. Of course, it's not just reform making critiques of the cabinet secretary. It's also the conservators as well. And I wonder, I think that a lot of conservatives have their nose put out the joint by the actions of some of the civil service between 2020 and 2024. You've got an Alex Burkart, the newly promoted deputy leader of the Conservative party. Someone who's the cabinet office brief. He's so many who've been very critical of the Blaireite political machinery and the Brownite economic structures that the civil service now represents post 1997. So I think that Tony Romero is very much reflecting the view that she has to make the civil

6:19service work for politicians, make this government a success tacitly. And also, I think put a bit of spirit back in the civil service. I mean, they've been really bloodied and bruised in recent years. You can see this in kind of internal morale polls and seeing how things are going in terms of the opinion service. They do occasionally. But also, you look at the lack of talent coming through at the just below SCS level. Some of the people coming in to replace these perm sex. And also, I think there's an unfortunate element which is that the perm sex have themselves become quite political figures. So I think that if we do have politics has to work in this way before we form a light, formally politicise it and rip up some of the Northcott Revellian reforms that have governed the system which now seem to be coming apart somewhat. Tim, you mentioned there that Antonio Romero has been allowed to effectively write her own brief. Do we know what that expanded brief really entails? Well, it's sort of the interesting thing is she's sort of setting her own sort of objectives to achieve this and this. And it's sort of, you know, my understanding is that that was all run past Keir Starmer and was kind of signed off. Burnham was kind of second look at it.

7:20And I think I don't think anything's being taken out. I think if anything's being added that will, you know, give her the ability to shape policy. The line in it that excited most attention was that she would be the principal policy adviser to the Prime Minister. Now, I think there's a lot of members of the cabinet who might think that in their areas at least that that was the case. And, you know, bluntly, there's normally a head of policy in Downing Street who might think that that was their job. I think people around her say that's pretty unremarkable. Actually, it's basically the role that the cabinet secretary is ultimately there. You know, in the old days, the cabinet secretary was a secretary. They said in the cabinet, they took the notes and they went off and said, this is what's been decided and this is what we need to do. It's a much more kind of management role now, a delivery role. So I don't think she thinks that's terribly remarkable, but it certainly puts in black and white, something that, you know, sometimes might be less best left sort of in a fake term. So the other interesting thing when I was researching this piece and putting calls in,

8:23you know, the original report that kind of prompted me to get it into this in the times kind of said that she she's looking at legislation as a result of, you know, the outcome of this review. My understanding from talking to people around her is that she's less, she doesn't think that necessarily needs to be legislation. And one former man, I spoke to you said, well, we'd be stupid to whether put it in law, because if you put it in law, it can be straightforwardly repealed by the next law. And it can also, it also just sort of creates a target on the civil service. And you say, look, look at all these powers we've accrued. What I would you write all that down, the dark arts are best exercised in the dark bluntly and senior civil servants who know how the world works. It's probably better for them to sort of exercise their powers when no one's looking. Well, the right is all down to say, look at us over here. That would be an absolute red rag to Danny Krueger who is in charge of reforms, power and for government. Danny Krueger's view is that Andy Burnham's analysis that Downing Street is both too big but not powerful enough is correct. But he says, what is needed is that ministers should be empowered. And the prime

9:26minister should be empowered. What he seems to, what Burnham seems to have accepted is Ramea, who's kind of interpretation that she ought to be empowered. And that's that's the wrong way of doing it. And he, there's a lot of suspicion in reform world. And that this is a sort of civil service attempt to bind reforms hands and see off attempts to bring in more politicisation, more more outside officials and all the rest of it. And frankly, the civil service should focus on delivering for the government of the day to prove that it's worth its while. My understanding is that that's exactly what Ramea thinks as well. And that really the only solution to the civil service surviving in its, anything approaching its current form is to show that it works. And, you know, she's told colleagues that I want the next prime minister, whoever it is, from whatever party to say, well, I wouldn't I want this, this great civil service machine. But I think privately she acknowledges, is he's not the role's voice that it once was. And it's not the sort of world-class entity she's very into AI. She wants to, you know, she's already introduced performance

10:27related pay. I think there's, you know, there's an appetite to try and deal with the fact that a lot of useless people are tend to be promoted up. She'd quite like to see them removed. And one telling anecdote about what I think she wants from this is not a role's voice, but a different vehicle. I'm told in a meeting a couple of years ago on a previous effort at civil service reform, she sort of took one look at it and thought it was all bit underpowered and revisions. So what giving me is a Ford and I'm all right girl. So what she wants is a sort of lean mean machine. But it's also quite a talent quote, obviously, because she's regarded as quite glamorous and little bit racy by the standards of most stuffy old mandarins. She makes a lot of people uneasy. And it's a bit of a monite character to herself, but it, my sense from talking to mandarins and ex-manda in this is that even people aren't personally that fond of her, kind of accept the analysis that this is a sort of bit of a last chance of civil service and they all need to pull together. And I conclude this piece by noting Nigel Farage's quote that when he was handed 5 million quid by

11:28Christopher Harbourn, he told I think Nick Farage of all people at LBC News that if he wanted to spend it on a Ferrari, he would do. Well, the question for Farage really is where he'd become Prime Minister, would he be buying a Ferrari or would it still be a crap to have old Ford? Farage's views of Ford's have passed me by thus far. Well, while we're on the car talk, we should put in a word for our brilliant subdebs who put the headline Alpha Romeo on your piece, which yeah, I mean, it's one of the most perfect headlines I've ever seen. It's just perfect. She is the ultimate alpha female in Whitehall. And yeah, you can't improve on that. I sent her a note of commendation, thank you very much. Normally you get headlines and you know, it's the preserve of writing journalists to say, well, I don't write the headlines. It's not my fault that they put this stupid headline on something. And then just occasionally a perfect one comes along. It's a joy to behold. Thank you so much, Tim. Thank you, James. And thank you for listening.

12:41Support comes from wise. The smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. Your life is global. Your money should be two. Some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers. Don't be fooled. Extra costs often hide and bloat at exchange rates. Choose wise. You can send spend and receive money in over 40 currencies. Count on the exchange rates that you'd usually see on Google. That's how millions save billions on hidden fees. Be smart. Get wise. Visit wise.com. Season C Supply.