Antonia Romeo takes on the civil service
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The new cabinet secretary, Antonia Romeo, has published a list of objectives setting out her vision for what the civil service will look like under her. Many have interpreted it as her tightening control over government ... especially since Darren Jones stepped back from his Downing Street role. The path is clear for her to become the Prime Minister’s ‘principal policy adviser’, and to reform the civil service ‘so that it is recognisable for excellence in delivery, innovation and improved productivity’.
Is this all just word salad, or is she onto something?
James Heale speaks to Isabel Hardman and former Foreign Office diplomat Ameer Kotecha.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Seale. I'm joined today by Isabel Harman from The Spectator and I'm a architecture former civil servant in the Foreign Office. Now, Antonio Romero has started her job as Cabinet Secretary. Isabel, she set out a sort of new mission for government and establishing her objectives for the forthcoming year. |
| 0:21.2 | Just sort of talk us through how she's approaching the role. |
| 0:23.6 | Yeah, it's interesting. |
| 0:24.7 | She has published her objectives as Cabinet Secretary. |
| 0:29.5 | And this hasn't happened with any of the Cabinet Secretary since Sir Jeremy Hayward, |
| 0:34.3 | who was, I think it's widely considered to have been one of the most powerful |
| 0:40.2 | and effective cabinet secretaries of modern time. Not always universally loved, I think, |
| 0:48.0 | but his way of getting his way as a civil servant was admired across Whitehall even by those who didn't |
| 0:56.0 | like how he got his way. And so she has published her objectives and they include things which |
| 1:02.8 | are a clear contrast to her predecessor Chris Wormald and I think are designed to underline why |
| 1:09.4 | Chris Wormald isn't in position and she's been given the job instead. |
| 1:14.5 | They include that she visibly leads a civil service with clarity, energy and passion |
| 1:19.1 | and champions a culture of curiosity, innovation and pride, recognising high performance and excellence in delivery and innovation. |
| 1:26.7 | I mean, it's still sort of a whipped |
| 1:29.4 | cream of words in terms of what it actually might amount to, but there's clearly a desire to show |
| 1:36.1 | energy and a commitment to performance, which sounds so meaningless, but actually can be quite |
| 1:41.5 | challenging within the civil service where it is possible even at senior level, if not to coast, then to carry on doing things the way |
| 1:50.5 | they have been done for decades, even when all the evidence suggests that that way should |
| 1:55.6 | have been dropped a long time ago. And that was one of the frustrations that Kier Starrma |
| 1:59.7 | ended up having with his own choice |
| 2:01.2 | of cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, was that Wormald was very much stuck in his ways. Some |
| 2:06.8 | might say Stama is similarly cautious, but anyway, he didn't like what he was seeing in the |
... |
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