A hard rain is coming – Cummings’s warning to civil service
DOmInIC Cummings has warned Whitehall officials that ‘a hard rain is coming’ after their failures in handling the response to the coronavirus.
The Prime minister’s chief adviser has kept a low profile in recent weeks following a public outcry over his lockdown-busting trips to north-east england.
but in a video call with special advisers this week, mr Cummings said that the handling of the epidemic had underlined his determination to shake up the way Government operates.
mr Cummings, pictured, said the crisis had exposed ‘fundamental problems in the Whitehall machine’, which would require ‘radical changes’ to correct.
According to Paul Goodman, editor of the Conservative Home website, he ended the call by delivering the warning: ‘a hard rain is coming’ – an apparent reference to the radioactive showers that follow a nuclear blast.
Any move to restructure Whitehall is likely to lead to a long and bitter struggle with the civil service, particularly if it is seen as an attempt to shift the blame for shortcomings in the coronavirus response onto officials.
mr Cummings, who has long railed against the Whitehall infrastructure, indicated that he wanted to break up the Cabinet Office, which has been at the centre of the Government’s response to the pandemic.
He hit back at claims that he is a control freak who wants all decisions to be channelled through no10, saying: ‘Anybody who has read what I’ve said about management over the years will know it’s ludicrous to suggest the solution to Whitehall’s problems is a bigger centre and more centralisation.’
mr Cummings also denied that a Cabinet reshuffle is being planned and scotched rumours that he wants to see education secretary Gavin Williamson sacked for failing to get all primary school children back this summer.
boris Johnson’s ‘road map’ for recovery from the pandemic spoke of the need for ‘a rapid re-engineering of Government’s structures and institutions’ but no 10 has not yet set out any details.