Jeremy Heywood: The man who will help form a government in the case of a hung Parliament

Heywood is part of a group of civil servants who will be behind any negotiations if we fail to elect a Prime Minister

Heywood is part of a group of civil servants who will be behind any negotiations if we fail to elect a Prime Minister (Getty)

We may elect our politicians but when we can’t decide which of them we want to govern us then it falls to three men – themselves unelected - to take temporary oversight of the ship of state.

Officially, convention states, that should there be a hung Parliament it is up to all the parties alone to negotiate, scrap and squabble until a Government which can command the confidence of the House of Commons is formed.

But unofficially it will be the ‘golden triangle’ of Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Christopher Geidt, the Queen’s Private Secretary and Chris Martin, head of the Prime Minister’s Office, who will act as the umpires of constitutional impasse.

The most important of these is Sir Jeremy who has the advantage of having known and worked with all three main party leaders over the years.

He was in the Treasury when Ed Miliband was an aide to Gordon Brown and later liaised with him when he moved to become Tony Blair’s Principle Private Secretary.

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His ties to Mr Cameron go back longer. Sir Jeremy and Mr Cameron were together on Black Wednesday, when the future Prime Minister was special advisor to Lord Lawson, then Chancellor, while Sir Jeremy was principal private secretary.

More recently, of course, he has worked with both Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg as Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service.

Some in the media have characterised Sir Jeremy as a Machiavellian character – pulling the strings of elected politicians behind the scenes - but this is a long way wide of the mark.

In reality those who know him say he is trusted and like by senior ministers for his ability to find solutions and compromises to complex problems in Government with a minimum of political drama. He has a wry smile and is entirely unpompous in his manner. In the tradition of the senior civil service, however, he has a slightly uncanny ability to make a point with his facial expressions alone without ever actually opening his mouth.

His job after 8 May will be that of a facilitator of talks and to a certain extent an arbiter of what is and is not constitutionally acceptable if both David Cameron and Ed Miliband have a legitimate claim to be Prime Minister.

He has privately made clear that unless Mr Miliband has an overall majority on Friday he expects Mr Cameron to stay in Downing Street. That has not pleased Labour who will almost certainly try and use public pressure to force the Prime Minister to step down if it looks arithmetically impossible for him to form of working majority.

Behind the scenes Sir Jeremy will attempt to resist this: His view is that Mr Cameron needs to remain as Prime Minister until Ed Miliband can either prove he can “command the confidence” of the Commons by a deal with smaller parties or Mr Cameron resigns of his own volition. If that doesn’t happen Mr Cameron will remain in power – albeit in a limited capacity - until Parliament meets to debate a Queen’s speech two weeks after polling day.

Backing Sir Jeremy up will be the other two members of the golden triangle the most important of who is Sir Christopher.

As the emissary of the Queen he will want to protect the monarch from getting too embroiled in the unfolding drama but he has shown in the past that, when called for, her majesty can play politics with the best of them.

During the Scottish referendum campaign both Sir Jeremy and Sir Christopher swore blind that the Queen would never intervene or in any way presume to tell her subjects what to do.

But we now know that both men formulated a form of words for the Queen to use spontaneously to well-wishers in Balmoral in which she said hoped voter would think “very carefully” about their decision.

It was reported – accurately – as the Queen siding with the no vote which was exactly what Sir Jeremy, Sir Christopher and the Queen had intended.

It will be the same after Friday: The civil service and the Monarchy will be at pains to be seen to be neutral but if they believe the national interest favours a subtle intervention in the negotiations they will not shy away from it.

But one thing is pretty certain is that we, the public, are unlikely to hear much about any such intervention – at least until memoirs are written.

The official line from the Cabinet Office is that the job of the civil service in the case of the hung Parliament is just to find a room for negotiations to take place in and order tea, biscuits and water. Everything else is up to the politicians.

Of course, Sir Humphrey.