‘O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?’ Keir Starmer seems to have mirrored Juliet after deciding to move Chris Wormald on as cabinet secretary. Yet the young Capulet was asking not where her lover was, but why he must be Romeo – a Montague. ‘Deny they father and refuse they name’, she implored, so that the pair could be together. With Antonia Romeo widely expected to be Wormald’s successor, a similar chorus of ‘whys?’ seems to be pricking up across Whitehall.

Sir Simon McDonald, the former Foreign Office permanent secretary and reliably pompous avatar of the Ancien Régime, has said that ‘more due diligence’ needs to be done around Romeo’s appointment, suggesting it would be a mistake. When serving as the UK’s consul-general in New York a decade ago, she was investigated for bullying and some expenses snafus, but was cleared, and has since served across several departments, often attracting rave reviews. Our own Tim Shipman is a fan.

Cutting NHS waiting lists should not be harder than defeating Napoleon

Cutting NHS waiting lists should not be harder than defeating Napoleon

Currently at the Home Office, Romeo is regarded as a dynamic force. She has a reputation as someone able to steer a civil service regarded by critics as more Trabant than Rolls-Royce. Upsetting a few colleagues may be a regrettable necessity, and a welcome contrast to the incumbent, a dutiful public servant not famed for his initiative. Starmer recruited in his own image.

On appointing Wormald, Starmer claimed he would oversee ‘nothing less than the complete re-wiring of the British state’ – a ludicrous promise, especially when attached to so gray a man. Romeo or not, Wormald’s successor will be the fourth cabinet secretary since the........

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