While politicians have spent the six-week election campaign pounding pavements and selling their message on the doorstep, civil servants have been hunkering down in Whitehall preparing for the next government.
Officials in each department have used the two main parties’ manifestos to produce “red packs” and “blue packs” — briefing documents created in the event of a Labour government or a Tory government being formed on Friday.
These packs, usually between 30 and 100 pages, collate party manifesto promises and policy priorities relevant to each department, while also outlining the pressing issues that require an urgent decision from the incoming cabinet minister.
Whitehall insiders admit the pollsters’ consensus that Sir Keir Starmer is on track for a landslide victory means significantly more time and attention has been dedicated to producing the “red packs” in this electoral cycle.
Civil service preparations have also been aided by two full rounds of access talks between shadow cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries, but it is fewer rounds than would normally take place. Rishi Sunak’s shock decision to call a snap election for July, instead of pushing polling day to the autumn, caught both Labour and Whitehall by surprise.
Some elements of Labour’s programme for government require significantly more “flesh upon the bone” in terms of policy development before they can be enacted, according to one person familiar with the access talks.
Sir Mark Sedwill, former cabinet secretary, said last week that he had urged civil servants preparing for the arrival of new ministers to tread gently.
“Remember these are human beings who are, by the end of an election campaign, utterly exhausted and suddenly they’re confronted with this whole new, very exciting but quite intimidating set of challenges,” Sedwill said at a conference hosted by TheCityUK financial services industry group.
Welcoming new ministers involves not only preparing policy briefings but trying to make them feel at home with smaller touches such as finding out what food they like. A bowl of David Cameron’s favourite mints was laid on when he arrived as prime minister.
Ahead of a previous election, a mirror was hung on the wall of an office which officials expected to be inhabited by a female minister for the first time, in case she wished to apply make-up before media appearances.
Meanwhile, the FT reported last week that the Treasury was preparing for the expected arrival of the first female chancellor with proposals to remove a urinal from the ministerial private bathroom.
The civil service is studiously politically neutral, but some officials are excited by the prospect of working with a new administration with fresh ideas and a strong mandate from the electorate for change.
Nonetheless, seasoned mandarins are aware that, if the polls prove correct and a Labour government is ushered in for the first time in 14 years, there will be a major cultural shift in Whitehall.
The expected change in policy priorities, the framing of issues and use of language may be unfamiliar to those civil servants who have only ever worked under a Tory government.
Joe Owen, director of impact at the Institute for Government think-tank and a former civil servant at the cabinet office, said officials would be combing through the back catalogue of speeches, articles and essays by Labour shadow cabinet ministers forecast to arrive in their departments.
“Officials will be looking out for language and focus changes. When the Tories came to power in 2010, for example, they wanted to talk about ‘society’ as opposed to ‘the state’. Rather than talking about ‘investment’, they wanted to call it ‘spending’. They preferred ‘business plans’ to ‘strategies’,” he said.
Another factor complicating officials’ preparations is the question of whether Starmer sticks with his current line-up of shadow cabinet and junior ministers after the election. The widespread expectation in both Labour and civil service circles is that his senior front bench team would remain largely unaltered, but at present he has more shadow cabinet ministers than there are cabinet roles.
Changes to machinery of government also threaten to create headaches for the civil service. Starmer has drawn up proposals for new “mission boards” to drive through his priorities for government.
Joe Hill, policy director at Reform think-tank and a former spending lead in the Treasury and Home Office, said the first few days of a new administration were “very choreographed”, with ministers needing to make calls on decisions held over during the “purdah” period — including senior recruitment choices.
A new frontbencher’s personal preferences will quickly become clear during their initial days in office. “Some ministers will want to go through all the issues with officials, others want it all set out in writing to read in a ministerial box over the weekend. Some ministers will only want to talk to the very senior officials and their private office — so you [as a civil servant] get a sense of where you are in the pecking order quickly,” Hill said.
In a regular reshuffle, officials would ordinarily swap gossip with their equivalent numbers across Whitehall to learn more about a minister arriving from another department. However, only a handful of Labour MPs expected to enter government roles this week served as ministers in the New Labour era between 1997 and 2010.
As well as advice for officials, Sedwill had a word of guidance for new ministers last week. “What civil servants want is strong government, strong ministers, [who are] decisive, politically astute, able to communicate, able to deliver an agenda,” he said, citing Lord Peter Mandelson and Michael Gove as examples of effective frontbenchers.
He added: “Despite the fact they are really hard work, most civil servants really enjoy working for them because they know what they want to do, they know how to make the machine work [and] they know how to manage the politics.”
