Jeremy Corbyn is planning to give Whitehall’s Sir Humphreys the order of the boot.
The real-life role of the iconic mandarin in the television hit Yes Minister is to be abolished under plans being considered by Labour chiefs.
Permanent Secretaries, the top civil servants characterised by the late actor Nigel Hawthorne as a scheming saboteur of his minister’s plans, would be replaced by political supporters.
The move comes as part of a revolutionary shake-up of Britain’s famously independent Whitehall army of civil servants charged with putting government’s’ policies into effect.
Mr Corbyn and his shadow cabinet colleagues, who would take over as ministers, believe the current service is too steeped in years of austerity, privatisation and right-wing economic thinking to fairly administer Labour’s long-term economic “transformation”.
Instead they want Whitehall departments to be headed by political appointees sympathetic to the government’s aims.
(Image: Christopher Furlong)
A shadow Cabinet minister said: “For too long the promises political parties make at election time do not come to pass because they get clogged up or frustrated by the machine.
“Governments of all parties have felt this and it is time to find a better way of making sure the promises we make are delivered.”
It follows a similar exercise carried out under the Tory-Lib Dem coalition in 2012 after ministers complained about being frustrated by the slow workings of the government machine. Results of that £50,000 exercise disappeared into Sir Humphrey’s shredder.
Discussions among Labour policy-makers have examined systems in France and the US where the top tier of government administrators is expected to make way for a new team after every election.
They have concentrated on the recently introduced systems in Australia and New Zealand where the equivalent of Sir Humphreys have been replaced by administrators on legal contracts to deliver specific government policies.
