Starmer set to appoint first ever female Cabinet Secretary

Sir Keir Starmer is set to appoint Dame Antonia Romeo as his most senior civil servant, making her Britain’s first female Cabinet Secretary.

The Home Office permanent secretary will replace Sir Chris Wormald, who quit on Monday, as part of a shake-up in the Prime Minister’s top team, which was triggered by the resignation of Morgan McSweeney, the former chief of staff.

Sir Chris’s departure would mark the third high-profile exit from Downing Street in recent days after Sir Keir’s chief of staff and Tim Allan, his director of communications, quit No 10.

Dame Antonia, 51, has been handed the Cabinet Secretary role at a moment of peril for Sir Keir.

She has been described as “somebody who gets things done and is very focused on delivery”, with fellow civil servants calling her a “disruptor”.

She has worked in the Civil Service since 2000 and has served as the most senior civil servant in the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for International Trade.

It was in the latter role that she worked closely with Liz Truss, the former prime minister, and was lined up as a possible Treasury permanent secretary after the chaotic mini-Budget under Kwasi Kwarteng.

The plan ultimately derailed when the economy crashed under Ms Truss’s premiership, and she announced her resignation less than a month later.
The mother of three studied PPE at Oxford University and obtained an MSc in economics at the London School of Economics.

She served as British consul general in New York and completed a stint running the government’s Economic and Domestic Secretariat in 2015.

In 2020, the Mail on Sunday reported that Dame Antonia had been investigated over allegations of bullying and misusing expenses while in New York in 2017.
She was alleged to have broken government procurement rules to acquire £30,000 worth of Farrow and Ball paint and furnishings for her grace-and-favour flat.

Dame Antonia was also accused of allowing her husband’s firm to use the taxpayer-owned property for work events for free, and of threatening junior staff who raised objections.

But she was subsequently cleared by the Cabinet Office, with an ally of Dame Antonia telling The Telegraph that the allegations were “refuted as without foundation at the time”.

Dave Penman, the general secretary of the civil servants’ union, claimed that the criticisms contained a “whiff of misogyny”.

It was suggested that Dame Antonia could become cabinet secretary to Boris Johnson, the then prime minister, after Sir Mark Sedwill’s exit, but the role was ultimately given to Sir Simon Case.

Dame Antonia was also passed over for the top job by Sir Keir in favour of Sir Chris, despite concerns among some ministers that he was too much of an establishment figure to get things done.

Appointed the Civil Service’s “gender champion” in 2019, Dame Antonia wrote a blog entitled “Breaking the menopause taboo in the Civil Service”.

She has previously said that diversity and inclusion are “absolutely crucial” for Whitehall and wrote of her pride when one of her former departments was praised by Stonewall for making the ministry more “inclusive for trans staff”.

She was given a damehood in 2024 for public service while working at the Ministry of Justice.

Sir Chris resigned after he had been the subject of repeated negative briefings, being seen by some in No 10 as “the embodiment of Whitehall groupthink”.

Michael Gove, the former Conservative cabinet secretary, said that the briefings against Sir Chris were a “disgrace” and criticised Sir Keir for sidelining him. Mr Gove, who worked with Sir Chris at the Department for Education, said he was a “dedicated public servant who executed a coherent reform programme”.

Sir Olly Robbins, the permanent under-secretary for the Foreign Office, was also mooted as a possible replacement for Sir Chris.

But concerns were raised about his involvement in the vetting process for Lord Mandelson before his appointment as US ambassador.