Who will Keir Starmer pick for Whitehall's top job?

Who will Starmer pick to run Whitehall? Will the Cabinet Secretary and Civil Service head roles be split? How influential will Sue Gray be? And what process will there be?

Soon, there will be a new Cabinet Secretary. It’s not quite clear when, but it is obvious that it cannot wait long.

For months rumours had been swirling that a new Labour Government would replace the Cab Sec (Whitehall-speak for Cabinet Secretary) immediately. That did not happen.

But this morning, Politico’s Tim Ross reported that Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, is ‘being advised to step down permanently from his role for health reasons at the end of this year’. The Cabinet Office declined to comment, suggesting that the broad premise of the piece is correct.

Who is in the running? How will it all work? When will he or she be in post? And what should the new Government do?

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