The weekly tradition of the cross government meeting of Special Advisers (lamely known in the village as ‘SpAd school’) has somehow survived through multiple Tory administrations. The meeting tends to leak when things are going badly. As the Sunak regime winds up, it’s fair to say it’s leaking like a sieve…

Guido is told by several SpAds present at the meetings that Downing Street Chief of Staff Liam Booth-Smith has finally resurfaced to head up the increasingly thinly attended gathering. The chatter is that he had avoided them for six weeks, leaving it up to Deputy Chief of Staff Will Tanner to try and rally the despondent troops…

Guido’s moles complained that both Booth-Smith and Tanner would arrive, list trivial successes of the week like “women in sports announcement from DCMS,” meanwhile ignoring news leading stories such as Lee Anderson defecting to Reform, and thereby “ignore the elephant in the room“. Many in Downing Street and Whitehall are simply going through the motions, having missed the boat on the private sector milk round. Meanwhile, insiders say open tensions between key personalities at the top of the building continue. The shine has come off spadding…