UK’s Revered, Once Discreet Civil Service Turns on Starmer

The UK’s Labour government roared to power promising to improve morale in a civil service degraded by budget cuts under 14 years of Conservative rule. Instead, a public spat with some of its most senior officials is hurting its ability to navigate war with its enemies and disagreements with its friends.

“This is trouble,” Emily Thornberry, a senior Labour figure and chair of the influential Foreign Affairs Committee, told the News Agents podcast. “We have never needed to have a Foreign Office more at the top of its game than we do now and I think that the world needs that too.”