It must have seemed at the time like an innocent enough sentiment.
As the former shadow chancellor Ed Balls left Strictly Come Dancing last November a press officer working in Downing Street tweeted: “Alas it’s over. Well done Ed Balls for getting this far & entertaining us.”
Robin Gordon-Farleigh knew he was being followed by Theresa May’s chief of staff Nick Timothy. What he could not have predicted was his reaction.
Mr Timothy called aside the prime minister’s principal private secretary, Simon Case, and demanded that Mr Gordon-Farleigh be reprimanded for breaking the rules on civil service neutrality. By the time the reprimand reached Mr Gordon-Farleigh it was more of a warning: “Be careful, they’re watching everything you do.” A few months later Mr Gordon-Farleigh decided to leave government.
He was one of the lucky ones. In their time in government, The Times has been told, Mr Timothy and his fellow chief of staff Fiona Hill forced out or sidelined supposedly independent civil servants — some after a period of alleged bullying — in direct contravention of Whitehall codes of conduct.
As far back as 2011 Ms Hill was officially reprimanded by Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, for her behaviour. On several occasions the senior civil service union was called in to represent those who had fallen foul of Ms Hill.
Now that they have departed serious questions are being asked about how two unelected political aides could ride roughshod over the civil service while exercising such an iron grip on everything the prime minister saw or heard.
The role of the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, is also under scrutiny, with senior civil servants questioning why he did so little to rein in the pair.
“He abdicated his responsibility as leader of the civil service,” one senior former No 10 staff member told The Times. “You were on your own and the people you looked up to in the house — people like Jeremy Heywood — to give you that cover absolutely didn’t.”
Joey Jones a former adviser to Mrs May, said: “Responsibility for the toxic dynamic in Downing Street was not Nick and Fi’s alone. Senior people in the civil service should also ask themselves searching questions.”
The Times has been told that at least one senior official intimately involved in the Brexit negotiations was at one stage prevented from seeing the prime minister by Mr Timothy. Sir Ivan Rogers, who was then Britain’s permanent representative to the EU, tried to alert Mrs May to what he believed were flaws in the government’s understanding of Brussels.
“He was told that he couldn’t write submissions to the prime minister and that everything had to go through the chief of staff,” one insider said.
“He tried to get one-to-one meetings with Mrs May and was rebuffed. Everything that the prime minister saw or heard was controlled by Nick.”
Senior sources said no attempt was made by Sir Jeremy to ensure Sir Ivan got access to Mrs May. Believing he had been frozen out, Sir Ivan quit. A former senior Whitehall figure said that had disastrous consequences for the initial stages of Brexit preparations.
“Losing Ivan Rogers at that point was really bad just as we were preparing our position on Article 50,” they said. “He was ex-Treasury and knew about budgets and financial services and how Brussels works. They just lost that. You’ve ended up with yes men and they’re bloody useless to everybody.”
Sir Ivan’s isolation was possible because the pair ripped up the previous practice in Downing Street that senior civil servants could directly put submissions and papers into the prime minister’s nightly and weekend red boxes.
Under the new regime material seen by the prime minister had to be vetted first either by Mr Timothy or Ms Hill. That not only dismayed Whitehall but gummed up the process of decision-making by inserting a fresh layer of bureaucracy into the No 10 operation.
The pair shared an office directly outside Mrs May’s and in a breach of usual practice they were given their own civil service private secretary in an attempt to smooth relations with other officials. It didn’t work.
One senior figure in the government department outside Downing Street told The Times that a policy would be agreed by No 10 officials only to be ripped up when it was sent for sign-off by the “twins”.
But it is the allegation that pressuring and ordering about of senior civil servants went unchallenged that is potentially the most damaging to Sir Jeremy, who is head of the civil service.
In one instance Helen Bower, the prime minister’s official spokeswoman, was banned on the orders of Ms Hill from travelling to America when Mrs May first met Donald Trump. It was the first time in 20 years that the prime minister had not been accompanied by her official spokesman on such a trip.
“Fiona took umbrage with Helen and decided she could get lost,” was one insider’s take on what happened. “It was shambolic.” It is understood that Ms Hill was unhappy with Ms Bower, who had disagreed with decisions on media strategy. Ms Bower took up a new role in the foreign office.
Her replacement — in her civil service role — was James Slack, the political editor of the Daily Mail. While the £140,000 post was advertised, only seven people applied and none of them was internal. Unusually, recruitment consultants were not brought in to help find a suitable candidate.
Mr Case, Mrs May’s principal private secretary, was also said to have been put under considerable pressure by the pair to the extent that he looked for jobs elsewhere in the civil service.
Another senior civil servant who worked in the Ministry of Justice was forced out of his job within days of Mrs May coming to power because he was seen as being too close to the prime minister’s old enemy Michael Gove.
The official was put on gardening leave at the taxpayers’ expense before taking on a role in the Cabinet Office, which suggested that instructions for his removal came from the Ministry of Justice. However, the civil servant believed Ms Hill was involved in the decision.
Several of those who believe they were forced out, and who have spoken to The Times on the guarantee of anonymity, felt betrayed by their treatment. “One by one, May’s team got Heywood to replace permanent secretaries and senior Downing Street officials across Whitehall, plus the head of the UK’s delegation in Brussels, and brought in officials more compliant to Downing Street’s complete hegemony,” one source claimed.
Another said: “The prime minister’s team ran a coach and horses through the civil service rule book and no one seemed interested in stopping them.”
Sir Leigh Lewis, a former permanent secretary, suggested that the style of management in No 10 under Mrs May led to bad decision-making. “It seems to have been pretty common knowledge that Downing Street was characterised by powerful gatekeepers who were highly intolerant of anyone who challenged their view.”
A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “Sir Jeremy Heywood takes his responsibilities as head of the civil service very seriously, including ensuring special advisers comply with their code of conduct.”
The Times contacted Mr Timothy and Ms Hill. Mr Timothy declined to comment on “unsourced personal attacks”. Ms Hill did not respond.
