Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent
PA Media
The Labour Party had not done “enough thinking” about some of its plans before taking office, the former top civil servant has said.
Simon Case told the BBC Sir Keir Starmer’s top team “weren’t good enough at communicating what [they] wanted to be done” in the early days of the Labour government.
But Case said he did not think it was “right to describe it as a chaos”.
Case, who served four prime ministers, was the most senior official in government from September 2020 to December 2024, when he stepped down on health grounds.
The cabinet secretary role involves advising the prime minister, leading implementation of the government’s policies and managing other high-level civil servants.
Case was in the role for the six months after Labour won the general election last year and was involved in the transition between governments.
Those early months were marked by riots following the stabbings of young girls at a dance class in Southport, a row over ministers accepting freebies, and Sue Gray leaving her role as Sir Keir’s chief of staff.
In his first interview about the early days of the Labour government, Case was asked whether ministers had done enough thinking about what they were going to do in office.
Case told the BBC: “There were some elements where not enough thinking had been done.
“There were areas where, sitting in the centre of government, early in a new regime, the prime minister and his team, including me as his sort of core team, knew what we wanted to do, but we weren’t communicating that effectively across all of government.”
He continued: “Definitely I would say, early on, we weren’t good enough at communicating what wanted to be done and what that needed to be to everybody.”
But he added: “I absolutely don’t think it is right to describe it as a chaos.”
‘Difficult’ start
Case said the scandal over gifts and hospitality, which unfolded in government in the summer of 2024, was a result of “naivety” on the part of Sir Keir and his team.
He said it was a “very difficult” period for the prime minister because it meant his “loved ones [being] pulled into politics”.
Speaking about his relationship with Sue Gray for the first time, Case said that it was a “very unusual” decision by Sir Keir to appoint her as his chief of staff.
Before taking up the role, Gray had spent decades as a civil servant and became a household name as the official appointed to investigate lockdown parties in Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s premiership.
Case said her move into party politics from the civil service “was a source of enormous controversy within the civil service”.
He said because Gray had arrived in Sir Keir’s operation less than a year before the general election, it meant the team “wasn’t sort of fully bedded in and tested” prior to entering government.
Gray was replaced by Morgan McSweeney, who was previously chief adviser to the prime minister and masterminded Labour’s general election campaign.
Case said the prime minister’s decision to replace Gray with McSweeney “was a very good appointment” because “I could see right from the first day of having conversations with him how sharp a political operator he was”.
In a separate interview with the BBC, cabinet minister Pat McFadden also suggested for the first time the prime minister had sacked Sue Gray as his chief of staff.
When her departure was announced by Downing Street in October 2024, it included a statement from Gray saying that she had “chosen to stand aside”.
McFadden said: “I think it’s a great shame it didn’t work out, but after a few months the prime minister decided it wasn’t working out and made the change.”
He added: “One thing I think that people have learnt about Keir Starmer is if he thinks something isn’t working out or is not right, he will make the necessary change.”
The interviews with Case and McFadden feature in Starmer’s Stormy Year, a BBC Radio 4 documentary available on BBC Sounds and on Radio 4 on Monday at 11am.