The new cabinet secretary faces an early battle with the prime minister

Simon Case was the prime minister’s stand out choice to become cabinet secretary. So much so that Case appears to have been appointed despite not originally applying for the role. Case clearly starts with the backing of the prime minister, which is crucial if he is to succeed. But as he takes on the most senior and the most complicated of jobs in the civil service, he must also demonstrate his own independent authority. This means standing up to  the person who put him in place – and the reason for that might come soon.

Case starts just as the government admits it is willing to break international law

Most acutely, Case’s first day will be dominated by the government’s admission that it is willing to break international law and is making itself able to do so. The publication of the government’s internal market bill has brought with it the admission from the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, that the government was seeking a mechanism to change the existing deal, cemented in an international treaty with the European Union.

This move was foreshadowed by newspaper reports that the head of the Government Legal Department, Sir Jonathan Jones, would be leaving his job over the government’s willingness to undermine the rule of law in this way. Case not only has to tackle Jones’s grievances and the fall-out from his departure, but he must also consider where he stands on this issue. The civil service code makes clear that ministers cannot ask civil servants to break the law, but how much does Case personally object to recent developments, and how does he explain his position to the thousands of civil servants who will also be asking themselves where the line is drawn?

Case must also rule on the allegations about bullying by Priti Patel

If a battle over the fundamental principles of the civil service were not enough, Case must solve a problem which is about ministerial accountability and the code which guides ministers’ behaviour. For many months now, the Cabinet Office has been sitting on a report on whether the home secretary, Priti Patel, did or did not bully staff in her department. The inquiry was triggered by the acrimonious departure of the previous permanent secretary at the Home Office, Philip Rutnam, who is bringing a case of constructive dismissal. But the issue is much wider.

Patel’s ministerial future is a decision for the prime minister, but the content of any report to the prime minister, compiled by the Cabinet Office, needs to be something that the cabinet secretary is willing to support. And Case, who has never run a large department, is also the head of the Civil Service – a work force of 400,000. It is his role to protect officials from bad behaviour by their ministerial masters. There has been an internal battle between Downing Street and officials over the conclusions of the report, delaying its release. To whom will Case lend his authority? This is a difficult task if the report says one thing but the government want it to say another.

Case may face a battle with his own workforce over the return to offices

Case’s final problem is less political but may prove even trickier in the long run. One of the last public acts of the outgoing cabinet secretary was to call on civil servants to follow the prime minister’s heeding and return to their offices. Many civil servants were commanded to work from home at the start of the coronavirus pandemic and, since then, that is where many have stayed. Civil service unions reacted angrily to Sedwill’s intervention, even threatening to call a strike.

However unlikely an actual strike may be, Case, a historian, knows all about the 1981 strike by civil servants that so enraged Margaret Thatcher, and he will want to dampen down the perception that there is increasingly bad blood between the civil service and this government. But ministerial pressure – the new cabinet secretary may be asked to echo the commitment wrung from Sedwill – may force Case to take a position rather than take on the role of peacemaker. While Case has experience of solving a number of thorny political problems at the top of government, his leadership on the issue is what the rank and file civil service are likely to judge him.

Cabinet secretary is usually the final job in a civil servant’s career, and long term career prospects within the civil service are usually of little concern for most occupants of the role. As such, speaking truth to – or picking fights with – ministers is not as daunting for those closer to retirement as it might prove for someone just 15 years into his civil service career. Case, at 41, has become the most senior civil servant in the land a little earlier than he might have hoped. He may now have to do battle with the man who put him there.