Although the outcome of the next election is far too uncertain for pollsters to call, one thing is certain.

Whoever forms the next Government will have strong recent experience of the Whitehall machine and how it works.  Suffice to say, neither Conservative, Labour or Lib Dem ministers will be talking up the ‘Rolls Royce' perfection of civil service engineering.

Unlike 1997 or 2010, freshly appointed ministers will not be smooth-talked by mandarins into the ways of Whitehall, or be naïve enough to believe all problems are political, and merely awaiting the new regime's policy cure.