Dominic Cummings is replacing the civil service clique with one of his own

The danger of Cummings’ plan is that the neutral civil service could become politicised

“The opposition aren’t really the opposition. They are only the government in exile. The civil service are the opposition in residence.” So spoke Jim Hacker in Yes Minister. But it could just as easily have been Dominic Cummings.

In the most bizarre government recruitment advert ever, Boris Johnson’s most influential adviser has invited “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” to apply to him personally for a job in Downing Street. Sir Humphrey, the all-powerful and very permanent secretary in the BBC comedy, would no doubt regard Cummings as a weirdo and misfit, and describe his ideas as “courageous” – Whitehall mandarin for “mad”. Sir Humphrey would politely strangle Cummings’ attempt to stage a revolution from within by replacing traditional recruitment with hiring and firing at will. “I’ll bin you within weeks if you don’t fit,” Cummings writes. “Don’t complain later because I made it clear now.”

By listing “weirdos and misfits” as one category of applicants, Cummings deliberately grabbed headlines, but also eclipsed his good ideas, such as bringing in outside experts including data scientists, economists, project managers and policy and communications advisers. (Whatever happened to Cummings’ former boss Michael Gove’s declaration that people “have had enough of experts”?).

Cummings is right to say the civil service has too many Oxbridge arts graduates and not enough scientists. As one Whitehall insider told me: “We recruit in our own image.” Cummings is right that there are too many generalists and not enough specialists, and that it is wrong to typically move officials to a new post after 18 months, which means they are rarely held accountable.

Cummings, who read history at Oxford, admits he makes decisions well outside his “circle of competence”. He hopes the new recruits will make him “largely redundant” within a year. Although he has previously taken time out to recharge his batteries, and read up on the science and technology that provide his guiding stars, I suspect he will be a prominent Downing Street player for much longer than a year.

I think Cummings is wrong to buy the Yes Minister caricature that the civil service is an enemy within. True, it is not good at implementing change because it likes doing things the way they are done. True, it should bring in more people from the private sector, making a spell of public service the norm. But that would require an overhaul of pay structures. Parts of Whitehall, such as communications, have suffered from years of job cuts and salary freezes.

Every prime minister I have reported on, going back to Thatcher, has raged at the Whitehall machine. It’s a convenient scapegoat when politicians fail to keep overambitious promises. Cummings hints at concentrating power in No 10 – another familiar theme, since frustrated prime ministers often blame individual departments for their government’s failings.

In his memoir, Tony Blair said the skillset needed to make government work is not policy advice but delivery and project management. “The problem with the traditional civil service was not obstruction, but inertia,” he wrote. It was “superb” in a crisis, but met big challenges with small thoughts.

David Cameron and his ministers believed Whitehall was inefficient, full of blockers rather than doers; but they met resistance when they tried to reform. Interestingly, the Gove-Cummings reforms at the Department for Education were seen as the shining model. But they collided with political reality: Cameron moved Gove out against his will because he was seen as “toxic” by teachers and disliked by parents. How will Johnson react when Cummings’ new recruits come up with wacky ideas? I doubt he will be quite as relaxed about “short-term unpopularity” as Cummings is.

Disruptors like Gove and Cummings have an important role to play. But reforming Whitehall is like turning a tanker: putting a few pirates on board will not be enough. The government will need to take the 415,000 civil servants with it – including Sir Humphrey, who will win if Cummings declares war. Much better to work with the grain.

The danger of Cummings’ plan is that the (rightly) neutral civil service could become politicised if officials are recruited on the basis of what they believe. Imagine the outrage in Toryland if Labour had won the election and proposed something similar; cue screaming headlines about a Marxist coup.

This government should not become an expanded Vote Leave campaign. Johnson should prove that his new year plea for the nation to “come together” is not empty rhetoric. There are already some worrying signs. The PM intends to clip the Supreme Court’s wings – revenge for ruling his suspension of parliament unlawful. Parliament’s say in the EU trade talks is being diluted. Ministers are threatening to abolish the licence fee in a crude attempt to bludgeon the BBC into more sympathetic coverage; it must not become the Boris Broadcasting Corporation. Johnson should not use his new power to try to take the UK down a path towards a de facto one-party state.