Labour didn’t do enough thinking, ex-top official says

The Labour Party had not done “enough thinking” about some of its plans before taking office, the former top civil servant has said.

Simon Case told the BBC Sir Keir Starmer’s top team “weren’t good enough at communicating what [they] wanted to be done” in the early days of the Labour government.

But Case said he did not think it was “right to describe it as a chaos”.

Case, who served four prime ministers, was the most senior official in government from September 2020 to December 2024, when he stepped down on health grounds.

The cabinet secretary role involves advising the prime minister, leading implementation of the government’s policies and managing other high-level civil servants.

Case was in the role for the six months after Labour won…