Boris Johnson is set on reforming the civil service – but this is the warning he needs to listen to before he does

Persistent grumbling about Boris Johnson among Conservative MPs has turned to anger during the fiasco over exam grades, and despair about the aura of incompetence hanging over his government.

His usual approach to party management is an occasional speech to rally his backbench troops. But in recognition that he has a problem, he will meet more Tory MPs in small groups after the Commons returns from its summer break on 1 September.

Johnson and Gavin Williamson, the beleaguered education secretary, were lucky the Commons was in recess while the exam controversy erupted. By the time MPs get their teeth into what went wrong, the storm will probably have abated. But there is one Tory critic the prime minister should listen to: his fellow Brexiteer Bernard Jenkin, who chairs the Liaison Committee of senior MPs and previously chaired a select committee monitoring Whitehall.

Jenkin is worried by speculation Williamson will oust Jonathan Slater, his top civil servant. Although officially denied, the move would hardly be a surprise; the permanent secretaries at the Home Office, Foreign Office and Ministry of Justice have all departed in recent months, and Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, will soon join them. It is part of Dominic Cummings’ plan for a Whitehall revolution – his one remaining mission after Brexit.

Jenkin told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One: “I am concerned that there’s a sort of pattern setting in under this government that something goes wrong and it is the permanent secretary’s fault or it’s some public body’s fault, but it is never the government’s fault.” (The now dismantled Public Health England has been blamed for mistakes at the start of the coronavirus crisis.)

He added: “The only way that the civil service can deliver what ministers want is if there is a free and open and trusting flow of information backwards and forwards from ministers and officials… If the whole discourse becomes stifled in an atmosphere of blame and fear, then I don’t think civil servants will be able to support ministers very effectively.”

Cummings will spearhead the reform drive when he and other key Johnson aides symbolically move from Downing Street into the Cabinet Office, though the PM will remain in Number 10. Johnson aides are convinced the Cabinet Office has underperformed in the coronavirus crisis, and deny scapegoating.

A review of the Cabinet Office’s operations will be conducted by Tory peer Francis Maude, who has unfinished business from his time as a minister keen to reform Whitehall. It will probably pave the way for the creation of a prime minister’s department in all but name. This is not a new idea. The Downing Street operation is small by comparison with foreign counterparts. Its rabbit warren of corridors and cramped offices do not make for efficient government. Other prime ministers considered having their own department but baulked at “power grab” headlines. In contrast, Johnson and Cummings will not lose much sleep over that.

While the emerging shake-up looks like centralisation, Johnson aides insist it is about having a small, efficient centre based on Number 10, the Cabinet Office and Treasury, and allowing government departments to get on with it. Departmental officials will believe that when they see it.

Nor is Johnson the first prime minister to think Whitehall’s fabled “Rolls Royce machine” sometimes feels more like an old banger. Some, like Tony Blair, complained that when they pulled all the levers, nothing happened on the ground. Johnson cannot let that happen to him. Allies tell me his Commons majority of 80 creates space for a 10-year plan to transform Britain. Yet Johnson knows his “levelling up” agenda will have to bear visible fruit in the north and Midlands by 2024 for him to be sure of winning a second term.

The civil service is far from perfect, and there is a strong case for shaking it up. It was set out by Michael Gove, who heads the Cabinet Office, in a 7,500-word lecture in June. But he also unintentionally gave the game away by saying: “Groupthink can affect any organisation – the tendency to coalesce around a cosy consensus, to resist change, look for information to confirm existing biases and to reject rigorous testing of delivery.”

For many civil servants, that describes the Johnson-Cummings approach as much as it does Whitehall. The government has appointed a national security adviser in David Frost with little experience of security and a head of a new public health institute in Dido Harding who has little experience of public health. Another trusted ally, Lord Maude, will likely give Johnson the verdict he wants on the Cabinet Office.

If Johnson and his ministers continue to shoot the messenger, they will end up shooting themselves in both feet. To shake off the label of incompetence, ministers will need to work with the civil service rather than wage permanent war on it.