From the Dunvegan Dribblers to the National Security Office: Lord Mark Sedwill Reflects on St Andrews, Brexit, and Diplomacy

The year is 1983. A young Mark Sedwill just returned to his room in Sallies after a long day of maths and economics. Soon, he’ll head to play football with the Dunvegan Dribblers before heading to debate practice, preparing to represent the University at the World Championships. Later, he’ll head to the Dunvegan for a shift. Little did he know, his world would soon become much bigger.  

After St Andrews, he headed to Oxford to complete his MPhil in Economics. “Oxford will be good for you,” he was once told, “It will rub the edges off.” With this idea in mind, Sedwill embarked on the beginning of a longer journey that led him to the centre of the British state.  

“I’m not a politician,” Sedwill said. “I’ve never been.” He served as the head of the Home Civil Service from 2018 to 2020. According to Sedwill, this position falls outside the political realm. “It’s a professional service,” he explained. 

Simultaneously, Sedwill occupied a sister role as Cabinet Secretary. In this position, he was the senior professional advisor to Prime Ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson, holding a major influence over governmental decisions. In 2018, he took up the role of UK National Security Advisor.  

As National Security Advisor, Sedwill dealt with three major issues: The first was Brexit, the second was the Salisbury attack, and the third was the first phase of the pandemic. “The professional machine,” as Sedwill called the Civil Service, had to keep going amidst the chaos of Brexit. Prime Minister Theresa May “needed someone who could hold it all together on the professional side” amidst Brexit negotiations, Sedwill recalled as his reason for taking on the Civil Service job. “She asked me to do it, or she certainly insisted I did it.”  

While the political side tackled progressing with Brexit, Sedwill, who was now fulfilling three roles simultaneously, handled the aftereffects of the Salisbury attack — an incident involving a failed assassination attempt to poison a Russian military officer and a double agent for British intelligence. “The major part of my job was essentially keeping going even though there was this Brexit negotiation going on,” Sedwill said. “I was dealing with those bigger issues of national security […] I was dealing with a question in Northern Ireland. I was dealing with issues in Korea, in India, Pakistan, in the Middle East […] All of those things carried on.”  

The Civil Service, Sedwill elaborated, is obliged to provide a “first-rate professional service to implement the policy that [the government] decided.” It wasn’t a matter of personal political alignment: “You're not saying, I support Brexit, I support Remain […] What you're saying is, we'll help you implement Brexit, or we'll help you implement whatever changes would have been made had it gone the other way.” 

The nonpartisan spirit of the Civil Service was only truly challenged once during Sedwill’s time leading it. “Brexit was a fault line that ran across political parties,” Sedwill said. “It wasn't so much a left-right thing.
It's become more of that now, but […] the majority of the MPs in the Conservative Party were remainers. They sort of forget it now, some of them, but they were remainers at that time.” 

The Home Civil Service is supposed to be (and typically is) nonpartisan, but even a government office intended to appear neutral fell to polarisation amidst such a period of unrest. Sedwill discussed the controversy that infiltrated government offices during his time there: “Every institution that tried to be impartial — the BBC, the Civil Service, the judiciary — got accused, actually, by both sides, of being partisan. Didn't happen over COVID, didn't happen over Trumpism, or anything of that kind. It did happen over Brexit, and it was hard.” 

Sedwill had two career highlights. “One was Afghanistan,” he told The Saint. “The second was really being the National Security Advisor, I think. I really enjoyed that job. In career terms, being Cabinet Secretary was a hell of a thing to do, but it wasn’t the thing I felt I had always tried to acquit myself for.” 

Being a diplomat means more to Sedwill than just maintaining peaceful relations and negotiating agreements. To him, it means you need to “embed yourself in a new place and get under the skin of a different country [and] culture. Get to know people, but get to know them [on] their own terms and in their own language. And as a diplomat, that’s the epitome.” Sedwill gained this perspective through his time living in Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq while learning Arabic to best connect to the culture. 

The life of a diplomat is a sacrificial, yet rewarding one, Sedwill said: “You have loads of adventures […] but it does come at a cost. This is not a career choice; it’s a life choice.”  

Now, Sedwill is a candidate for the next chancellor of the University. Emphasising his rejection of the title of politician, Sedwill joked, “This is only the second election I’ve ever been a part of. The first one was to be President of the Athletic Union.” He laughed fondly, recalling his first candidacy. “I think the electorate was, like, 35 people. And you didn't even get to make a speech.”  

As a teenager, Sedwill first applied to St Andrews as “a bit of a wild card.” He recalled arriving at St Andrews for the first time, looking around, and thinking, “Oh, wow. This is it.” He never expected just how far he would venture from that first arrival. 

Some advice is worth taking, and some is not. Despite having once been told it would be beneficial to “rub the edges off,” he remembered thinking in the moment, “I'm never having the edges rubbed off.” Now, he stands by that belief: “I still reckon that the successful career I had really arose because I never let them rub the edges off.” 

Illustration by Lauren McAndrew