Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA, suggested the prime minister had invoked "Trumpian" language on Thursday by claiming not to want to "drain the swamp" but going on to say that too many people in Whitehall were "comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline".
Penman told Starmer he feared it was "far more damaging than you had considered when you chose those words" after years of attacks on the civil service by previous governments had already harmed morale.
The Guardian understands Starmer's speech suggesting civil servants were partly to blame for blocking reform in public services and Whitehall made even some of his own ministers uncomfortable.
Yesterday Matthew Pennycook, a local government minister, said he had not personally experienced any particular civil servants "in a tepid bath of declinism": "They share our ambition. They are working absolutely flat out to make the changes to the planning system that we've already taken forward, and they'll continue to do that."
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