Hello and welcome to this special edition of Inside Briefing. This is to discuss the Cabinet

Secretary Mark Sedwell leaving. I'm Bronwyn Maddox, and I'm gathered here today

with two of my colleagues, Kath Haddon, our constitutional expert and Alex Thomas, who leads our

work on the civil service, to talk about what Sir Mark stepping down means and what a cluster of

other appointments and changes around the heart of government also mean.

The announcement came out yesterday, Sunday evening,

with exchange of supposedly cordial letters

between Seville and Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister.

Nothing to see here is the word from the Prime Minister,

but losing or getting rid of the country's top civil servant

in the middle of a pandemic suggests

rather the opposite. There was that phrase now almost famous in Sedwell's letter,

we have agreed that I will leave, I will step down, which have been much quoted as indicating

his reluctance. Who might replace him? What does the government want from the ex-cabinet

secretary? We're going to talk about all this. So, Kath, what do you reckon? Why a Sunday?

And is it a big deal? Yes, it's a big deal for the reasons that you said. To just start with

the wire Sunday, I suspect there was a lot of heavy briefing at the back end of last week and then over the weekend, you know, rumours swirling around this.

One has to wonder whether they sped up the process in order to try and nip that in the bud and perhaps to try and present this as a more cordial departure than

obviously we're assuming it actually was. Is it momentous? Yes. You've never had a cabinet

secretary forced out of his position and whether or not to some extent Mark was thinking about

departing whether or not you know in the end he just thought enough is enough and how much it was his own choice in the end.

This still does smack of him being forced out earlier than he would have done with coronavirus going on, the G7 presidency next year.

...