Is it time up for Simon Case, the mandarin who’s never out of the media?

The civil service is ‘a team without a captain’, argues Anthony Seldon. But can Sunak stomach ousting Case before the election?

Senior civil servants have been asking whether Simon Case can survive at the top of Whitehall for almost as long as he has been in post.

From his oversight of No 10 during the Partygate scandal to his role in the Richard Sharp affair, Case’s name has cropped up in almost every controversy to have dogged Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak over the last two years. When a top official repeatedly becomes the story, more often than not that means their days in the job are numbered.