Given fashionable assumptions that the civil service is a bloated blob, any measure that improves its effectiveness is surely a good thing.
Such as, for example, luring the brightest graduates from the top universities to embed the next generation of permanent secretaries. But in its wisdom, the government — or Jacob Rees-Mogg to be precise — is planning on scrapping the one scheme that is aimed at restocking civil servant ranks each year with fresh blood.
The famous (among the aspirational classes at least) civil service fast stream is to be another casualty of Rees-Mogg’s war on Whitehall which, as minister in charge of government efficiency, he has taken on as a personal crusade.
