An extract from the recollections of Sir Humphrey

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The dying months of the Sunak administration were a curious time. In the lead-up to his first (and last) party conference as leader, I recall that he told us he was going to make a speech in Manchester and asked us if there was a major Manchester-specific announcement that he could make. Somewhat tongue in cheek, I suggested that it would be a very brave decision to say that he was going to cancel the new railway line to Manchester. To our utter amazement, he seemed truly delighted.

The PM wondered aloud whether there was anything he could announce as an alternative which might please the audience, so I proposed that he could make a bold announcement by packaging up a series of announcements which we’d previously made and already put into long term budgets for road and rail improvements across the country, brand them as ‘Network North’, and claim that they were being funded by the £36 billion previously allocated to the railway line, thus giving him a £36 billion saving in the process. It would never actually have been £36 billion, of course – the estimates for all those schemes were drawn up by the same people who’d prepared the estimates for the railway line, and there was no chance of delivering them at that price. I explained to him that the budgetary process was such that they were really just lines in a spreadsheet the main purpose of which was to deter the Chancellor from making tax cuts, but he was so enthusiastic that I think he’d stopped listening. Bernard pointed out to him that the package included schemes in places like London and Exeter, which not everyone might agree were in ‘the North’, but after a momentary doubt he was reassured when I explained to him that, in Civil Service speak, ‘the North’ is a concept, not a place.

I fear that the alacrity with which the PM accepted this explanation served only to encourage Bernard, and when the PM asked what he could do to confirm his reputation for taking long term decisions, Bernard told him that whilst the cancellation of the biggest long term project which we were undertaking would help, if he wanted to add to that, he could promise to establish a fund to repair potholes in roads. As Bernard explained to me later when I spoke to him privately, he was being entirely honest – it would indeed ‘confirm’ the PM’s reputation in relation to long term decision-making, which is exactly what he had asked us to do.

Shortly after the decision to axe the railway line was leaked, the PM asked us how he could best demonstrate his decisive nature. Bernard, by now carried away by his own enthusiasm, suggested that the PM should deny that a decision had been taken and say that he didn’t know when he would take the decision, adding that he would take all the time he needed to think about the matter very carefully. Then, when he did stand up and make the announcement only a couple of weeks later, he would look very decisive indeed. As Bernard explained to me later, a few short weeks of prevarication is what decisive looks like in the Civil Service.

It all turned out to be a great success. We got a railway project which no-one in Whitehall had ever wanted cancelled, and replaced by a whole series of alternative projects all of which could be (and were) quietly cancelled later. As for the PM – well, PMs come and PMs go. Only the Civil Service goes on for ever.