Where does Wormald sacking leave Sir Keir Starmer?

Sir Keir Starmer and the rest of his cabinet may still be in their jobs at the end of a tumultuous week - but the same can not be said of key figures in behind-the-scenes roles.

The head of the Civil Service Sir Chris Wormald has been pushed out, along with the PM's trusted political aide Morgan McSweeney. His highly experienced communications director Tim Allan has also departed.

In the past 18 months no less than four communications directors have headed for the Downing Street exit.

Such is the rate of summary dismissals at Downing Street, it's probably just as well that not all of the measures in the government's employment rights legislation have been implemented.

But is transplanting staff at the heart of government part of a bigger strategy? Or is it simply a short-term tactical move, a sticking plaster to get the PM through the next news cycle?

There is precedent for prime ministers firing senior civil servants who are not seen as being on board with their programme.

When Liz Truss briefly took over at Number 10 she got rid of Tom Scholar, the top civil servant at the Treasury.

But Truss had inherited Scholar from Boris Johnson and she had, for better or worse, a clear policy agenda.

In Sir Keir's case, he is sacking or squeezing out people he initially approved.

As an insider said about one of Sir Keir's previous dismissals, the PM is getting good - at clearing up his own mess.

Dave Penman, head of the FDA union for senior civil servants, told the BBC the "tone and culture" in Number 10 had led to "exasperation" in Whitehall and was "in some ways worse than the Dominic Cummings/Boris Johnson era".

That's because people in Whitehall were surprised and disappointed that someone who had led a public body – Sir Keir had been in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service before entering politics – had not acted in a way significantly differently than the previous adminstration.

The anonymous briefings against Sir Chris when in post - and when his resignation was being negotiated - has alienated other civil servants, says the FDA, who are concerned that they will get blame rather than previously promised support from ministers.

Former Cabinet Secretary Lord O'Donnell denounced the handling as "shoddy" while the former permanent secretary at the Home Office, Philip Rutnam, told Newsnight that "an end to this kind of corrosive negative briefing…would be the single biggest thing this government could do to improve the effectiveness of the civil service in the short run and the long run".

At the time of his appointment, the PM said Sir Chris would be tasked with "the complete re-wiring of the British state to deliver bold and ambitious long-term reform".

Three days before he gave Sir Chris the job, the PM accused "too many people in Whitehall" of being "comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline".

So a year or so on, he must feel the Civil Service has not yet been given the short sharp shock of an invigorating cold shower he thinks it needs.

At the moment, the smart money is on Dame Antonia Romero - the current permanent secretary at the Home Office - getting the top job.

If appointed cabinet secretary, Dame Antonia is not a civil servant who would hide in the shadows and her supporters say she is a "disrupter" who can challenge Whitehall orthodoxy.

She could also be appointed quickly having been shortlisted the last time the role was advertised.

But in the wake of the Mandelson affair attention will be focused on the "due diligence" process ahead of any appointment.

Insiders seem confident that extensive vetting must have been done before Dame Antonia was given the top civil service job in the Home Office.

But her former boss that the Foreign Office, Lord McDonald told Channel 4 News that if she was indeed the favoured candidate "the due diligence has some way still to go".

This has been interpreted as a reference to an investigation Dame Antonia faced over allegations about her spending in 2017 when she was the government's consul-general in New York.

The Cabinet Office has said this had come from a single complainant and that an investigation had found no case to answer.

Dame Antonia's supporters believe some of the criticism she has received in the media is motivated by sexism.

Either way, this could be the first test of the beefed-up vetting processes promised by Sir Keir in the wake of the Mandelson controversy.

For someone who promised stability, the PM could ill-afford to lose what would be the third head of the UK civil service since he took power in July 2024, having initially inherited Cabinet Secretary Simon Case from the previous administration.

But some of Starmer's own MPs believe what is going wrong is not so much process as political direction - or lack of it.

Given the prime minister's "near political death" experience on Monday some senior Labour figures have spied an opportunity to nudge the government a few degrees to the left of where it is now.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has openly argued this week for the government to be "bigger and bolder".

Privately, a senior figure who - like her - is on Labour's "soft left" told me that current crisis "can't be wasted" and there should be a further reshuffle to put a more "balanced" team around the prime minister.

But the Starmer will still need civil servants to take the government towards the destination it wants to go.

The Institute for Government think tank – with excellent links to Whitehall – has said "no civil service appointment - however well chosen - can fill a political vacuum or solve the prime minister's troubles, and it is ministers who must set out a concrete vision".

There is now a chance for a fresh start to a Labour administration that is struggling in the polls.

But will history simply repeat itself?