UK/Prime Minister/Private Secretary

Office Holders on Wikispooks

Name	From	To
Augustus Jaspert	2012	2014
Charles Powell	1983	1991

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Dominic Cummings	“So if you think of two roles, right, the foreign secretary in Great Britain and the private secretary in the PM' office responsible for foreign affairs, an official whose name has never been in the newspapers, that person was like 10 times more powerful and important than the secretary of state was. And I think this is something which people just don't really realize. And it's part of how the whole system has just become fake. So you have fake meritocracy, fake responsibility, and then fake cabinet government. When you sit in Whitehall now, right, in meetings, they are literally scripted. So when the prime minister has a meeting with ministers, what happens is that before the prime minister has that meeting, officials go into the prime minister's study and they give them a folder. And in the folder at the front is a thing called chairman's notes. And that's the script. And that's what the prime minister reads out. And the conclusions for the meeting are in the chairman's notes drafted before the meeting happens. Right. Well, how does the psychology of it work? Officials are happy because they have almost all the real power. The cabinet secretary is now 100 times more powerful than any cabinet minister apart from the PM. And the MPs are happy because this whole system pretends that they're in charge. So both sides are basically happy with the fake version of the government.”	Dominic Cummings	2024

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