The cabinet secretary should not be dragged into investigations
Cabinet secretaries should not be dragged into politics
Cabinet secretaries are much more like Mycroft than Sherlock Holmes. They advise and influence behind the scenes, but they invariably run into public controversy when they are asked to investigate. That yet again is the lesson of the row over the involvement of Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, in the Andrew Mitchell affair, highlighted by yesterday’s critical report from the Public Administration Committee, sonorously entitled ‘The Role of the Cabinet Secretary and the Resignation of the Chief Whip’.