CSW speaks to Wormald's former colleagues to find out what makes the new cab sec tick, what he can bring to the role and whether he's someone you'd have a beer with
Sir Chris Wormald’s appointment as cabinet secretary shot holes in most predictions for the runners and riders vying to succeed Simon Case as the nation’s top civil servant. But perhaps that says more about pundits and personality-driven stories than it does about Wormald.
The 56-year-old son of a former senior civil servant was a permanent secretary for well over a decade, firstly at the education department from 2012, then at the health department from 2016 to 2024.
“Cometh the hour, cometh the man” was the tone of much of the feedback CSW heard during our on and off-the-record conversations for this piece about Britain’s 14th cabinet secretary. Many of those we spoke to talked of a fierce intellect, a gift for “getting under the skin of delivery” and someone whose astute understanding of politics in no way compromised his exemplary impartiality.
Matt Hancock, who as health secretary from 2018 to 2021 spent years working cheek by jowl with Wormald, told us that he was “one of the finest civil servants of his generation”.
Why, then, did his appointment take so many by surprise?
An unexpected appointment
The role of cabinet secretary was created in 1916, with original postholder Sir Maurice Hankey serving for 22 years. By contrast, the past 22 years have seen five cab secs. Famously, or infamously, no woman has ever held the job. It was on this theme that some Whitehall watchers expressed their disappointment on social media at Wormald’s appointment. This sentiment was also echoed privately to CSW by a number of senior civil servants. “Seriously?” one said via Whatsapp. “The best we could do was another middle-aged white man? On the plus side, Kemi [Badenoch] can hardly accuse us of wokery now.”
Others were surprised by Wormald’s elevation on account of his reputation for being rather introverted: he is someone who rarely seeks the limelight, preferring to keep a low profile. How would this translate into the rallying-the-troops part of the cabinet secretary role; into being the figurehead for a workforce of half a million officials?
Similar questions were asked when the late Jeremy Heywood took on the head of the civil service role in addition to his job as cabinet secretary. “For most of his career, Heywood has been the Kate Moss of government: you’d see him, you knew he was a big deal, but you never heard him speak,” we wrote in these pages in early 2015.
Presumably Wormald – like Heywood before him – will now have to be both seen and heard. Does the introvert thing matter?
“No,” said one ex-minister who has worked with him closely. “And, actually, I think the word ‘modest’ is more apt. Jeremy was modest, but Chris is more so because that is just absolutely central to his being and way of working. He’s very happy to delegate success, give others credit and bring other people on, and all of the good things that come with his sort of modest leadership. People can lead in different ways. He is not bombastic and he’s simply not gossipy. And that’s a good thing.”
Another former colleague of Wormald’s – this time on the civil service side – told us: “He has led two hugely complex organisations, and he does it in his way. They say about leaders: you can’t be like someone else. You’ve got to be more fully yourself. And Chris isn’t trying to copy anyone else. He’s not trying to be someone else.”
This former senior official also pointed to the hypocrisy of the discourse around leaders where “on the one hand people say: ‘We live in a celebrity world now, so we have expectations about people being particularly polished’. But, at the same time, we talk about the importance of being ‘fully who you are at work’.”
“So, if you’re more of a reflective person,” they added, “that should be fine.”
The former minister agreed. “The job isn’t to do the performing arts. If you’re a minister, the performative side of a public service job is obviously essential. I tend to think of these things in four categories: one-on-one; small groups; large groups; and then essentially public-facing and broadcast. And Chris is very good at one and two. He’s perfectly good at three, and he is at his least comfortable in category four. But, as a permanent secretary and as cabinet secretary, it’s the least important by quite a long way.”
Creature of Whitehall or iconoclast?
Wormald grew up in south London and was a pupil at boys’ comprehensive Rutlish School in Merton, which counts former prime minister Sir John Major and illustrator Raymond Briggs among its alumni. The cab sec subsequently graduated with a degree in history from Oxford University’s St John’s College and joined the Fast Stream. He studied for an MBA at Imperial College London in the late 1990s.
Wormald spent 15 years at the education department – including stints as principal private secretary to secretaries of state Estelle Morris and Charles Clarke. He also earned the respect of then-junior minister Lord Andrew Adonis, who has praised him as someone who “combines engaging wide-boy charm with bureaucratic mastery”.
“He understands the system, and he can work the system, but he isn’t entrapped in the system or shackled by it” Matt Hancock
In 2006, Wormald became director general of local government and regeneration in the newly formed Department for Communities and Local Government. He moved to the Cabinet Office in 2009, where he was head of the Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat – a role that has often been a stepping stone on the path of future perm secs. In the first couple of years of the coalition government, he served as director general in the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office, building a system to help DPM Nick Clegg keep an eye on policymaking across government.
Someone who worked with Wormald during this period pointed to that DG job, telling CSW that its significance has been downplayed in the coverage of Wormald’s appointment as cab sec.
“That shows that he will be able to do the diplomatic and ‘courtier’ element of the job with enormous experience,” they said. “Managing Nick Clegg’s operations was novel and challenging, and making a coalition work was a once-in-a-generation thing, and he did it brilliantly. One of the reasons that the coalition got off to such a good start was that Chris Wormald was the official responsible for Clegg’s operations. And then he goes all the way to the opposite extreme, which is implementing the [Michael] Gove reforms in DfE, which he did brilliantly.”
Changing the system from within
Announcing Wormald’s appointment, which took effect on 16 December, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said his plans for mission-driven government would “require nothing less than the complete rewiring of the British state to deliver bold and ambitious long-term reform”. He added: “There could be no-one better placed to drive forward our Plan For Change than Chris.”
The statement prompted chatter about whether a career civil servant like Wormald – a mandarin’s mandarin – was really the best person to undertake the sweeping transformation of public services that “rewiring the state” implied.
However, those CSW spoke to said it was precisely Wormald’s understanding of the machine that would enable him to help bring about radical reform.
“He understands the system, and he can work the system, but he isn’t entrapped in the system or shackled by it,” Matt Hancock said.
Dame Una O’Brien, Wormald’s predecessor at the health department, went further – observing in Wormald “an element of iconoclasm for the way he routinely questions fixed ways of doing things”.
“If you lift the lid on some of the things he’s done in the policy profession [of which Wormald was head from 2012 to 2020], really changing the way people think about evidence, creating a framework whereby the so-called generalist can actually do their work in a modern way, to a set of measurable standards…That is hard work. That is not saying, ‘oh, everything’s fine’,” O’Brien told CSW.
“Chris challenges things in order to build them up, not to destroy them; he knows there is always scope for improvement, he’s impatient for change and I think he’s demonstrated he will do the long, hard yards to bring that about.”
O’Brien also told us that Wormald clearly has “extraordinary experience” of leading big systems of public service “through the most challenging circumstances imaginable”.
However, she added that a top-level run-through of Wormald’s CV only spotlights some of the qualities that make him the right pick as cab sec. In addition to his years leading the policy profession, she argued that his lesser-known job as editor of the Civil Service Quarterly is significant too. Both of these roles “really brought him into contact with all the different issues and challenges that sit at the centre of government,” she said.
O’Brien said “confident”, “humble” and “fearless” are three words that neatly sum up Wormald. “He’s very willing to speak openly about what he doesn’t know or what he might get wrong. He’s confident in doing that,” she said. “He’s got a rigorous framework for how he thinks about complex problems,which is not something that you necessarily see from the outside.”
Meanwhile, Hancock told CSW: “The thing that he is best at is finding a way to understand what, as a minister, you’re trying to achieve and even if your first route to it is blocked, finding an alternative – which is a consummate civil service capability. He does that very, very well.”
The kind of guy you’d have a beer with?
Outside of work, Wormald is keen on cricket, rugby and going to Cornwall. He is “definitely” the kind of guy you could go for a drink with, though he’d be happier with a pint of bitter than a glass of wine, according to someone who knows him well.
“Personally, I’ve always liked him,” said one civil servant who, as a junior official, worked closely with Wormald when the latter was a perm sec. They added that the new cab sec is “very down to earth and normal in lots of ways” but also has a knack for dazzling politicians with his capacity to be “all over” policy.
“He’s always impressed ministers – of all parties and types – by being someone who knows the answers to lots of stuff, can think strategically, gets politics and can therefore get things done,” they recalled.
The task ahead
Alex Thomas, programme director at the Institute for Government – and former principal private secretary to Jeremy Heywood – has pointed out that Wormald will bring a “different kind of experience to the role” from most of his cab sec predecessors. Choosing Wormald suggests Starmer really does want to take public service reform seriously, Thomas argued in a blog on the day the announcement was made.
“Wormald is not from the traditional Treasury or (more recently) securocrat mould of cabinet secretaries,” he wrote. “Instead, his career has been grounded in social policy, with a CV that suggests public service reform will be Starmer’s top priority.”
According to Thomas, such reform will start with the machinery at the centre of government. “Labour’s missions have not yet been properly gripped and Wormald needs to improve how No.10 and the Cabinet Office are organised to make the government’s priorities for change happen – and how they work with the Treasury, a department which fills the vacuum when the centre does not set a strong direction,” he said.
“Chris knows there is always scope for improvement, he’s impatient for change and I think he’s demonstrated he will do the long, hard yards to bring that about” Dame Una O’Brien
“The system must feel the jolt of clarity and strategic direction that can come from a new leader, and one who has been set the task – presumably – of driving improvements in performance across public services, especially in health and education.”
O’Brien said she believes Wormald’s experience and insight will be “massively influential” for turning the missions vision into reality. “Bridging the role of the civil service into those mission ambitions will be very important,” she said. “But more than that, it’s how the civil service as a whole will be able to identify with that work and be able to contribute to it. I think he will be in a very good place to be able to bring that argument to the top leadership of the civil service, but also to people on the front line of many of these departments.”
She added that the departments where Wormald has spent the majority of his time – education, local government and housing, and health – are responsible for “large, complex systems” that are highly relevant for the government’s reform plans.
Covid legacy
Wormald’s role at the helm of the Department of Health and Social Care during the coronavirus pandemic has arguably made him the most exposed permanent secretary at the ongoing Covid Inquiry. His appearances in front of the panel, chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, have attracted much scrutiny and the situation is unlikely to change. Detailed reports on core decision-making related to the pandemic and its impact on the UK’s healthcare systems are yet to be published, with nine of the inquiry’s 10 modules still “active”.
One government insider told CSW there is “no skirting around” the extent to which the reports will be “challenging” for senior officials still in post.
But they added that Wormald’s personal experience of the chaos at the heart of government in the early months of the pandemic could be a “huge strength” in the civil service’s top job.
“One of the cabinet secretary’s key responsibilities is oversight of the whole setup of the Cobra infrastructure, emergency preparedness, resilience in the civil service,” they said. “Chris Wormald will have learnt in spades where things go wrong. Who better to put things right than someone who has actually walked through each and every day of that?”
Whatever difficult questions the inquiry may yet present to Wormald, his main task is to demonstrate how his deep knowledge of government – combined with his public service-facing perspective – can help to deliver the rewiring of the state that No.10 demands.
Given the current state of both public services and the economy, this might require superhuman powers – something one former colleague indeed attributed to the new cabinet secretary. In response to Wormald’s promotion, Lord Jim Bethell, who served as a health minister throughout the most acute phase of the pandemic, wrote the following on X: “When the killer zombies invade, I’d like Chris Wormald at my back”.