Guido hears that after the chaos of the last month, Downing Street’s SpAd-based union unit is now dead in the water. According to multiple sources, the unit will be transposed into a “Union Cabinet Committee” consisting of the PM, Gove, Sunak, David Frost, Simon Hart, Alister Jack and Brandon Lewis, with Carrie Symonds ally Henry Newman giving “No. 10 political steer“. The unit has been slated as lacking direction and infrastructure. Guido is told the new structure sounds similar to successful Cummings era Cabinet committees like XO (Exit Operations).

The challenge is that committees like XO were successful because they were accompanied by a huge amount of infrastructure below them. And it was battles over hierarchies, directing civil servants, and the machinery to force programmes through a less than dynamic Whitehall that ultimately brought the previous Union unit down. There will be a huge amount of pressure on Newman to deliver the wiring below the political strategy team. The danger is that with no infrastructure to back it up, soundbites will not turn into action…