It may not be the Queen who takes charge of running the country if there is no clear election winner on Friday, but it will fall to the little-known cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to keep the show on the road.
His job will be to ensure David Cameron and his ministers do no more than act as a “caretaker government” and to offer support to cross-party talks to form a government.
Heywood, 53, is no stranger to operating at the very centre of power in Britain. Within a month of starting his career 23 years earlier at the Treasury, the Quaker-educated economist found himself in the role of principal private secretary to the then chancellor, Norman Lamont, dealing with the fallout from Black Wednesday.
Nine years later, minutes after the planes hit the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, Tony Blair phoned Heywood as the one man he felt could reassure him, and asked: “Are you sure there aren’t any aeroplanes flying towards us?”
A further seven years later Gordon Brown was consulting Heywood, by then principal private secretary to the prime minister, on how to avert the disaster of a global banking collapse. Heywood appears to have made himself equally vital to David Cameron’s Downing Street, where he has a reputation as a Whitehall deal-maker with a remarkable appetite for work. The prime minister first met him when both men worked in Lamont’s private office.
TAndrew Adonis, who is a key channel of communication between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, has expressed total confidence in Heywood. “He defines the concept of the professional civil servant: free of political bias yet utterly dedicated to helping the elected government implement its programme,” Lord Adonis has said.
Though he is often portrayed as the most powerful man you’ve never heard of, and the “greyest of grey Whitehall mandarins”, Heywood’s career has had its controversies. He left the civil service in 2003 following the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly after it emerged he had not minuted some key meetings. After a brief period at the financial firm Morgan Stanley he returned to Downing Street in 2008 when Brown became prime minister.
The Cabinet Manual drafted by Heywood’s predecessor, Gus O’Donnell makes clear that in the event of there being no clear result from the election, Cameron, as a caretaker prime minister, is expected to “observe discretion in initiating any new action of a continuing or a long-term character”.
This means that, while ministers remain in office and essential business continues, major policy decisions, signing off contentious contracts, and making appointments or long-term commitments should be deferred wherever possible.
“If decisions cannot wait they may be handled by temporary arrangements or following relevant consultation with the opposition,” the manual says.
It will be down to Heywood to decide where the line should be drawn in each case and how to advise Cameron to approach key events, such as the next EU summit.
But it will be in his role facilitating cross-party talks to form the next government that Heywood could prove most crucial. Lord O’Donnell felt he was in such unknown waters in this regard that he felt it necessary to write the handbook.
Although Heywood will have his own way of going about things he will no doubt follow the book’s advice, even to the extent of offering the negotiating teams the specified choices of holding their talks in parliament, Admiralty House or the cabinet offices at 10/70 Whitehall, all of which come with or without hot and cold running civil servants to record the meetings and support the discussions.
David Laws, the Liberal Democrats’ lead negotiator in 2010, recalled being greeted by O’Donnell and the private secretary to the Queen when he went into 10/70 Whitehall on the Sunday after that election to hold the first formal day of coalition negotiations. It will be Heywood who answers the door this time.
