13 May Contest entry: Special Advisers
For my competition entry I chose to enter the Anthony Howard Award, a prize for aspiring political journalists. As part of the application, I had to propose an essay on a topic of my choosing. I chose to look at special advisers, the political appointees who work alongside ministers and senior civil servants in Whitehall. In large part this was due to special advisers including Nick Timothy, Fiona Hill and Dominic Cummings making headlines for their exploits while in government. I was also interested in the issue of accountability, as special advisers are mostly unknown to the general public and are almost totally insulated from scrutiny, with civil servants appearing before parliamentary select committees to justify mistakes or controversial decisions by special advisers. I was also asked to produce a draft essay with some summary paragraphs to supplement the relatively simple entry requirements for the AHA.
Proposal
“Take Back Control”
That phrase, far and above any other slogan in recent memory, has changed the course of British politics and reshaped our public life. To remember a time before those words were formulated and weaponised is to remember an entirely different world to the one in which we now live. As Tim Shipman wrote in All Out War, it is not unlike remembering Britain on the eve of war in 1914. An alien world, unaware of its impending expiration date.
That slogan was so potent because it captured the underlying anxiety many Britons felt about European government. Its legislators were largely anonymous, they sat in a foreign land. Even those who were subject to the scrutiny of a British ballot box were sheltered from direct accountability to constituents by an electoral system that empowered party apparatchiks to manage regional lists from Whitehall.
It is one of the great ironies of our time that this slogan, and the campaign that accompanied it, were the brainchild of a man who has never stood for public office. Indeed, a man that few outside of Westminster are likely to have heard of. I do not believe it would be an exaggeration to state that, despite having never faced an electorate, Dominic Cummings is the single most consequential figure in British politics since Blair, and arguably since Margaret Thatcher.
Cummnings cut his teeth as a Special Adviser, or Spad, to Michael Gove during his tenure as Education Secretary. Described by the Independent as “ruthless and passionate” with a “formidable reputation”, Cummings is widely credited with helping his Secretary of State shepherd controversial reforms to education through Parliament and facing down the outrage from public sector unions.
Two of Cummings’ colleagues who have have attained a measure of notoriety since 2016, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, exerted an unusual level of power under Theresa May at the Home Office and in Number 10. The Prime Minister’s critics accuse her of having relied extensively, even unhealthily, on the advice of the pair. Indeed Shipman, in his followup book Fall Out, paints a picture of a Prime Minister who finds it difficult to function without Hill and Timothy’s presence. He also reveals the extent of the two’s influence over May’s decision to call the 2017 election, and of Nick Timothy’s influence over the election manifesto.
Cummings, Hill and Timothy have been extraordinarily influential on public life in recent years, yet are widely unknown to the public. More troublingly still, there is no way of knowing how often Spads are able to exercise such power. Are these three individuals possessed of exceptional talent, drive or inclination to power? Are they simply the few whose exploits have broken into the public domain? I consider myself a fairly well-informed spectator of Westminster, but I find myself completely unable to answer. If that is the case for me, what hope does the electorate have of understanding the way its government truly functions?
This is what I hope to achieve during my Anthony Howard fellowships, if I am privileged enough to be selected for the opportunity. To gain a fuller understanding of the power dynamics in Whitehall, the extent of the responsibilities which Spads find delegated to them and how widely their reach and influence extends. Few would dispute that Spads are necessary features of modern government, but it is of crucial public interest concern to determine whether these individuals have transitioned from ancillary cog to prime mover, and how extensive that transition has been.
Draft essay with summary paragraphs
The hit television series Game of Thrones is a medieval fantasy romp with as many dragons, sword fights and instances of gratuitous sex and violence as money can buy. It is not unique in this respect, but the mass appeal of Thrones is striking and unrivalled in the history of visual media. What, then, does it do differently from its competition? One cannot say definitively, but critics routinely heap praise upon the characters of Petyr Baelish and Lord Varys, dueling spymasters on the King’s council. The two are fan favourites who exercise political power in the shadows through deceit, coercion and bribery, and though they ostensibly serve their realm there is little doubt that they think first of their own ambition before making any move.
That archetype will strike a chord for some of the keener political anoraks. It mirrors the characterisation of Special Advisers (spads) that we are presented with on the rare occasion a news story featuring these elusive characters rumbles into view. Hyper-ambitious party loyalists, claiming large salaries from the public purse while fulfilling mysterious and unknowable roles in the back corridors of Whitehall. It is perhaps telling that portrayals of spads (or spad-like characters) in our pop cultural lexicon is so thoroughly negative. In the Game of Thrones book series, Varys is known to cut out the tongues of the children he employs as spies, while Baelish is a venal and occasionally homicidal manipulator of money. Less obliquely, the much-beloved British sitcom The Thick of It portrays spads as either moronic and inept, or morally bankrupt. All are intensely dislikeable as individuals.
That perception has not been salved by the spads of the real world. Notably, Damian McBride seemed to hit Thrones levels of malevolence when it emerged in 2009 that he had planned to set up an anonymous blog where he would post fabricated allegations about the personal lives of senior Conservative Party politicians, including David Cameron and George Osborne, as well as their spouses. The resultant firestorm elicited multiple public apologies from the then-Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, before his Government fell the following year. Of note, McBride quietly returned to Westminster in 2015 as an adviser to the Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, then the Shadow Defence Secretary.
Dominic Cummings, formerly in the employ of Michael Gove at the Department for Education, was another spad who found himself gaining notoriety for his conduct. Cummings’ appointment had initially been blocked by Andy Coulson, the Prime Minister’s director of communications who would later be felled in the News of the World phone hacking scandal. With Coulson out of the picture, Cummings joined Gove and quickly established a fearsome reputation as a quick-tempered and unpleasant colleague. Observers credit Cummings’ abrasive and confrontational style with forcing the coalition’s education reforms through a reluctant civil service and hostile educational establishment. So abrasive was Cummings that David Cameron referred to him as a “career psychopath” in one public speech, while a former colleague told the author of this essay that he too felt Cummings was a “psychopath” but came later to appreciate his methods in the face of civil service bureaucracy. “He’s definitely a psychopath, but he uses those traits for the right causes”, he clarified. Another called Cummings an “evil genius”.
Cummings would later stake a claim to being the most significant British political figure of the 21st century by masterminding the campaign to take the UK out of the European Union in 2016, but more recently still a pair of spads hit the headlines for their outsize contribution to the course of our national destiny. Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill had been advisers to Theresa May at the Home Office throughout her unusually long tenure in that office, and had developed fearsome reputations of their own. Tim Shipman has reported that Timothy and Hill were so deeply maligned by their contemporaries for their short tempers, micromanaging of departments and cloak-and-dagger antics that they acquired a variety of monikers including “the terrible twins” and “the gruesome twosome”, among other epithets which are even less flattering. Perhaps most gallingly, Timothy in particular was reported to revel in his apparent influence over Mrs May both as Home Secretary and Prime Minister, going so far as to boast openly to colleagues in 2016 that there were “three people in this government: Theresa, Fiona and me”.
So why is it that a class of people seemingly composed of aggressive, abrasive, power-hungry puppy kickers should have such unaccountable influence over the politicians we elect? Firstly, it is only fair that we should defend the honour of the spads. Though they abhor the limelight, making it difficult to gather comprehensive information, there are accounts of pleasant spads as well as odious ones. Shipman described Henry de Zoete, a colleague of Cummings’ at the Department for Education, as “calm, softly-spoken and polite”. The author has met on several occasions James Price, special adviser to the Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal, who is an ebullient and personable character fluent in self-depreciative humour. It seems therefore that, though the long hours and strain of the post require certain characteristics — an uncommon work ethic, commitment to politics, a certain capacity for ruthlessness — spads in general are not cruel, manipulative or avaricious. At least, no more frequently than the rest of us.
But why have them at all? The spad has been a source of controversy since their emergence in the 1960s, when aged Hungarian economists including Nicholas Kaldor and Thomas Balogh advised the Wilson government on matters of public policy. Wilson found that keeping up with the post-war economy was too heavy a burden to be borne by MPs, but he also mistrusted the civil service. He introduced the spad in order to be the “guardian of the manifesto” against the deadening hand of civil service meddling. As the political environment changed, the profile of spads have changed with it — no longer elder imparters of wisdom, spads are typically younger than the officials they serve, and are drawn from as wide a variety of backgrounds as the Westminster village can allow. Journalists, think tank staff and especially political researchers abound in the corridors of Whitehall, and their roles vary greatly.
Alistair Campbell was famous as the media chief of the Blair government (and the inspiration for The Thick of It’s terrifying Malcolm Tucker), while the above mentioned Henry de Zoete served as Gove’s communications head in the Department of Education. Other spads might be policy wonks, or advise their masters on matters of politics and public opinion. When there is a crisis of leadership at the top of Government, such spads may take on a discrete role in their Minister’s preparations to seek higher office. So varied are the day-to-day lives of spads, that to consider them as a cohesive group feels in a sense reductive. Nick Hillman, a spad of three years who worked with former Universities and Sciences Minister David Willetts, has advocated an increase in the number of spads for precisely this reason. Speaking to the Clacton MP Douglas Carswell for Channel 4 News, he said: “it would give greater sources of information and other experiences”.
He conceded, however, that “some [spads] definitely saw [their job] as a way of getting in to parliament. Some were never interested in that, they were just interested in power”.
Summary paragraphs
- Incorporate my interview with James to touch on the role that he and his colleagues play in the House of Lords, while comparing and contrasting with reports of spad antics from other parts of Government. Reference Tim Shipman’s retelling of a spad in the Department for Wales who was routinely belittled and made the butt of jokes due to the perceived irrelevance of her department compared to more prestigious locations such as the Treasury, FCO or Number 10.
- Discuss reports from the UCL’s Constitution Unit, Institute for Government et al who have commented on the ever-growing roster of Spads, but endorse their presence as necessary for the proper functioning of government.
- Address the need for political advice in the 24/7 news environment, which civil servants are forbidden to provide
- Address the role Spads play in bridging the gap between apolitical civil servants policy advice and political concerns, ie through examining a policy proposal and gauging likely cabinet support or public reaction
- Address the possibility for policy-minded spads to bring a different perspective to policy formulation than might be received from civil servants, who regularly face criticism for adhering to the conventional wisdom of their departments rather than making innovative or new suggestions
- Discuss the failings of spads and what might be done to make them more accountable and more effective
- The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) of the House of Commons suggested spads required greater training and support, as well as more active oversight from their ministers
- Paul Grimson’s blog post a Conservative Home which blamed (what he percieved as) a decline in quality of spad on the decline of the Conservative Research Department, where many Tory spads were trained in politics. The CRD produced David Cameron and George Osborne, as well as many of the party’s most significant post-war intellectuals including Reginald Maudling and Enoch Powell
Q&A
Q: How long have you been a special adviser, and how did you end up in government?
A: Not very long at all, less than a year. I’d started out as a management consultant, but then I got a role at CCHQ (conservative central headquarters) working on the 2015 campaign. I started about a year out from the vote, and it was a great experience. By the end I was on a battle bus in the north-west and managing a whole raft of volunteers. After the vote I moved to the Taxpayer’s Alliance, and got promoted to be their campaign manager. I’d been campaign manager for a bit over 18 months when Lady Evans called. That was in October 2018.
Q: You’re still very young then. Is that unusual for a spad?
A: Not in our office. We’re all quite young, but I know there are spads who are older. Mid-30s is about average.
Q: Do you think spads have enough experience to do their jobs properly at that age?
A: I think it’s more important the kind of experience you have. The Lords office is unusual in that much of our work is really restricted to Parliament. We don’t deal very much with public policy, unlike someone at the Treasury for instance, who will be working on the budget or the spending review or what have you. Those people usually have quite a bit of experience, or they came up through the CRD (conservative research department). We’re political creatures first and foremost.
Q: What do you get up to on an average day?
A: My role is pretty varied. Annabelle deals with a lot of the legislation side of things as it comes through the House, she’s a specialist on that and helps Lady Evans with a lot her scrutinising work. But the rest of us have quite a wide brief, consulting with civil servants on proposed changes to legislation, setting up meetings with peers, dealing with lobbyists and so on. We don’t deal much with the media here, just because of the nature of the role as I explained earlier, but we do maintain relationships with some of the lobby journalists.
Q: What are your thoughts on some of the stories you’ve heard about other spads? I’m thinking particularly of Dom Cummings, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill.
A: I don’t want to comment too much on other officials in the Government, I’m part of the Government too and it wouldn’t be appropriate. What I will say is that the public are sceptical of special advisers in general, and it’s essential that we live up to the highest professional standards. I think every special adviser wants to stay out of the limelight as much as possible.
Q: What can the government do to make sure spads are working to as high a standard as possible?
A: The government is trying to put together a training regime for spads now, which is good for people who have done jobs outside Westminster or who haven’t had to deal with the civil service. There’s the code of conduct and a few other pieces of guidance as well, but a lot of people still feel that things aren’t sufficient at present. It can be a difficult adjustment, especially at first.
Q: If you could reveal anything about life as a spad to the general public what would it be?
A: The stress of it! I’ve said it a few times but working in this office is different to working in a normal department. I have friends who work across Whitehall and they regularly work 100 hour weeks, wake up to phone calls in the middle of the night or sleep at their desks. My job is hard, but for some of them it’s just appalling. They live and breathe their brief, and the vast majority really do see it as public service, whatever the public think. The physical and mental exertion they go through would warrant huge salaries outside Westminster, but they’re committed to working for the government and trying to help the government make life better for ordinary people. That’s to their credit.
