A major shake-up of politics and policy in the UK was unleashed over the past 48 hours by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in league with his two closest advisors, Michael Gove, his Cabinet Secretary, and Dominic Cummings. On Sunday, Mark Sedwill, the head of the civil service (one of the most powerful positions in the UK), who is also National Security Advisor to Johnson, was fired (or “resigned"). Sedwill and the civil service, which is deeply connected into British Intelligence (in fact, British intelligence agents are part of the civil service), have been under attack by Cummings from the beginning. The Guardian, a leading voice for British intelligence, whined in its headline: “Mark Sedwill v Dominic Cummings is a Whitehall call to arms — Civil servants are braced for a fierce attack from their own government after cabinet secretary agrees to quit.”
Also on Sunday, Gove gave a speech denouncing the civil service for holding back innovation, calling for a policy on the model of Franklin Roosevelt, emphasizing the Forgotten Man, taking risks with big programs in science and development. He referenced to the U.S. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) as a model — a regular theme of Cummings’s polemics.
Then, today, Johnson granted an interview to Sun News, laying out his plans, which he intends to present in detail in a speech on Tuesday. Johnson says that the recovery from the disaster of the pandemic can not and will not be “a return to austerity... This is a moment for a Rooseveltian approach to the UK.” (see partial transcript below).
