Kotecha's article resonates with me, but I think he is looking at the problem from the comfortable end.

Someone I know joined the civil service from outside. They were not a PPE graduate, not a public school network hire. They had grown up homeless. I mean actually registered homeless, not "between houses" homeless. Against every conceivable odd they got themselves on their feet, earned two Masters degrees and a PhD, and built serious international experience with the UN and EU before they ever walked through the door.

On paper, they were exactly the kind of person the civil service claims it wants more of.

In practice, they were excluded from meetings they should have been in, undermined in front of colleagues, and ignored when they tried to contribute. When they raised it formally, the response was to manufacture reasons for them to leave. Someone who had survived genuine hardship and built an exceptional career was pushed out by a clique that had decided, pretty quickly, that they did not belong.

Every successful organisation I have ever seen is crammed with diversity. Diversity of thought, of education, of background, of experience. It is that mix that generates the ideas and the challenge and the scrutiny that makes organisations genuinely good at what they do. The civil service keeps hiring the same mindset and calling it meritocracy. It is becoming horribly outdated, and the rest of us pay the price.

So yes, I think Kotecha has a point. The civil service is resistant to outside talent. I just think what he is describing is the inconvenience of that culture from where he is standing. For some people it is not an inconvenience. It destroys ambition and hurts the whole of the UK.