MARK SEDWILL
Before he stepped down as cabinet secretary in September, Sir Mark Sedwill said he wanted to be remembered as someone who “always marched to the sound of gunfire, always took up the challenge, always sought to do my duty, and always sought to make an impact”. At the end of his three decades in public service, CSW asks: will he? Former ministers paint Sedwill as congenial, capable and utterly dedicated to each of his jobs, no matter how challenging. And whether deputy ambassador in post-9/11 Pakistan, running the Home Office, or leading the government through two simultaneous national crises, they have been challenging. Ex-officials say he was professional but generous with his time, despite his rank; but some say he had less interest in civil service reform than his predecessors.
Sedwill’s Whitehall career began in 1989 in the Foreign Office’s Security Coordination Department. Postings in Egypt, Cyprus and Iraq followed, including a stint as a UN weapons inspector, before he returned to the UK in 2000 as private secretary to foreign secretaries Robin Cook and Jack Straw.
Denis MacShane, then a Europe minister, says Sedwill fit the mould of Foreign Office private secretaries,
“the crème de la crème of the young high flyers”.
“In the Foreign Office, I met some of the smartest and some of the dumbest people in Britain and you could never quite tell when you began the conversation or the meeting. But Mark was certainly in the very bright category,” he adds.
In 2002, Sedwill became deputy high commissioner in Islamabad. David Walker, who was the high commission’s estates manager, says it was a trying time to be based there. “It was post-9/11, so there were a number of evacuations... Mark handled it professionally and well and was universally liked and respected.”
Walker used to walk Sedwill’s dogs with the then-deputy ambassador – who he calls a “regular guy and a decent bloke”. He recalls: “When you’re living in a goldfish bowl like a British high commission compound, you’re all thrown together and you get to know each other a lot better.
“We had a laugh and a drink. One of his major tasks – although we were all responsible for it – was to try and be upbeat and try to keep our chins up and try to get through each day safe and sound. And morale was very good.”
Walker’s assessment of Sedwill is a common one: friendly, professional, down to earth. Former Cabinet Office minister David Lidington says he was good humoured and “never pompous”. One-time immigration minister and fel