When Boris Johnson addressed government advisers on Thursday afternoon during a Zoom conference call he could not resist a joke. “Did you know spad [special adviser] is Latin for eunuch?” he said.
For many cabinet ministers the throwaway joke has a ring of truth. On Monday they received the prime minister’s long-awaited road map to easing lockdown restrictions just over an hour before it was shared with the general public. “There’s a lack of trust, it’s very frustrating,” one cabinet minister said. “We spend a huge amount of time trying to second-guess what they’re doing in Downing Street and in the Cabinet Office. It’s difficult.”
During the coronavirus crisis the government has become increasingly centralised. Dominic Cummings’s plan to reshape Whitehall is being delivered
