Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer doesn’t really run the country, according to a Whitehall insider. Dominic Cummings has named the person he believes really holds power in the United Kingdom – and nobody voted for this person. In fact, very people have even heard of him.
But Mr Cummings, who served as chief adviser to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and also advised former Educaton Secretary Michael Gove, says this person has more power than any elected politician.
The most powerful person in the UK is Sir Chris Wormald, according to Mr Cummings. Sir Chris is the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service – making him the most senior civil servant in the country.
And Mr Cummings said: “The Cabinet Secretary now has something like 100 times more power than the average minister does.”
Recalling his own experience serving in Number 10, Mr Cummings said: “If all kinds of things happen today, if when bombs go off, for example, or if a Secretary of State is caught by the security services in unsuitable liaisons, it’s not the ministers that get called first. The wiring diagram of power inside the system means that it’s the Cabinet secretary who is called first when the bombs go off and when crises happen.
“And the Cabinet Secretary decides which ministers are allowed to see what.”
Delivering a lecture in Oxford, Mr Cummings said: “At the moment, the Prime Minister has literally no role whatsoever in the management of key permanent secretaries who actually run the government departments. Nothing at all to do with it. The entire HR system of Whitehall works for the Cabinet Secretary, not for the Prime Minister.”
In comments reported in The Spectator, Mr Cummings insisted Prime Minister doesn’t actually make the big decisions. “If you want change on what’s important – if you want to see a different regime – you have to have a Prime Minister who is actually in charge of setting the priorities for the key officials in the country. That doesn’t happen now.”
Who is Sir Chris Wormald? The 56-year-old Oxford graduate was appointed Cabinet Secretary in December 2024. Before that he served as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Health, making him the lead viciol servant in that department during the Covid pandemic, and he has also served as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education.
Mr Cummings provided a number of examples of elected politicians being deliberately kept in the dark. He said: “I’ve sat in the Cabinet Office watching as terrorists actually on the run from cave to cave in Pakistan call on satellite phones London lawyers, using human rights laws to demand that British taxpayers give them millions. And the Cabinet Office says we’ve got to pay them out.
“And it sends over these millions, and then it classifies it all in such a high level that no MPs know about it. These cases are not discussed in Parliament. These cases are not discussed in the media.”
