Guido can confirm that highly respected No 10 foreign policy adviser John Bew has told colleagues he will shortly be departing Downing Street. Labour briefed back in July that Bew wouldn’t be allowed to continue advising as a SpAd, and a month later he was said to be still at work in government on “a series of defence-related issues.” Now he jokes that as “an excellent new foreign affairs team beds in, it is a good time to sub myself off before I begin to resemble dear old Casemiro”…
Bew, who has survived four PMs, tells colleagues will now take up long-held plans to start as Professor of History and Foreign Policy at KCL – where he’ll be heading up a new Centre for Statecraft and National Security. He’s also taking up a position as Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University to work on an Urgent Security project as well as becoming Distinguished Advisor to the Australian National Security College. Bew’s keeping busy…
Government insiders speak highly of Bew and there were some rumours he would stay on in a Starmer administration. It’s Downing Street’s loss…
Labour spent their time in opposition on a moral crusade, wagging their fingers at Tory “cronyism” and promising they’d be the ones to “clean up politics.” Though Starmer’s lofty pledges to govern “with openness and transparency in everything we do” are not ageing well…
After 76 days in power, the Cabinet Office’s list of SpAd interests still hasn’t been published. Maybe Sue Gray (on £170,000-a-year salary) and her slow appointments of SpAds — is to blame for the delay…
In the past, these lists have revealed commercial ties and side gigs of SpAds. So, it’ll be interesting to see given current events – if and when Labour finally releases it – especially with some whispers suggesting advisers are being part funded by Labour-linked advisory firms. One for the transparency Starmer preaches, surely…
In the latest chapter of Labour’s cronyism saga, Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray is now pocketing a staggering £170,000 – £3,000 more than the Prime Minister himself. According to the BBC, Gray demanded the princely sum and ignored advice to take a few thousand less to ‘dodge this very story’…
Not only does Gray’s salary dwarf that of her Tory predecessor Liam Booth-Smith, she previously led the crusade for austerity in adviser pay. Back in 2016, while she was at the Cabinet Office, she spearheaded the policy to cap SpAd salaries at £72,000—though she pushed for them to be even lower. Now she’s raking in 236% of the salary cap she enforced…
A Tory source tells Guido:
“The hypocrisy of Sue Gray taking the highest ever SpAd salary – after years of cutting Tory spad pay at every opportunity and persecuting generations of Tory advisers – is a new level of reality.”
Hypocrisy from Labour comrades is a theme that seems never ending…
The Tories are asking questions about Sue’s salary:
The McSweeneyites are seething…
Guido can reveal that CCHQ’s long-serving head of press, Harriet Smith, has finally achieved SpAd-dom after almost seven years working for the party. Smith joins newly-appointed chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris. Guido’s old enough to remember the Mail reporting Smith would never make the jump…
The news follows the appointment of Oscar Reddrop to replace Ed Oldfield as No. 10’s broadcast SpAd over the weekend. Hopefully his work in No. 10 creates better output than his time on the Shaun Bailey mayoral campaign…
There’s still one gap following February’s night of the long knives, which saw the infamous clear-out of No. 10 staff. In the wake of Munira Mirza’s departure from the policy unit Elena Narozanski followed her out the door, leaving a gap as No. 10’s ‘Women & Equalities, DCMS and Extremism” adviser. Surely a crucial position to have vacant as they introduce the Online Harms Bill to parliament…
Read the SpAd list in full below:
Now the dust has settled on last week’s reshuffle, Guido thought co-conspirators might want an update to the SpAd state of play:
While the joint No. 10 + No. 11 team is staying the same, Robert Jenrick’s ex-advisor Olivia Oates is joining newly-appointed Chief Secretary Simon Clarke as his SpAd.
Newly-promoted Cabinet Office secretary Steve Barclay has taken his ex-treasury SpAd Aled Maclean-Jones with him, and has been joined by former Dowden SpAd Amy Milner, as revealed by Playbook this morning.
Dominic Raab’s team has lost Rob Oxley who The Sunday Times revealed to be joining Nadine Dorries at DCMS. Guido understands Roxley will be her media SpAd while Hudson Roe, who’d only just returned to DCMS under Dowden, has been asked to stay on to work on policy.
Guido hears Anne-Marie Trevelyan has poached Will Holloway, a former DfIT advisor himself and more recently deputy director of Onward.
Kwasi Kwarteng has scooped up Marcus Natale from No. 10’s research and briefing team as a new policy SpAd to cover the energy and climate change brief.
Gove’s Cabinet Office team is following him over to the newly-branded Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in full.
Oliver Dowden has taken Emily Maister and Lucy Noakes with him to CCHQ, while Mike Crowhurst is our first paternity leave entry on the list.
Teams remaining the same include those working for Patel, Javid, Coffey, Eustice, Shapps, Lewis, Hart, Rees-Mogg and Lord Frost.
Many newly-appointed secretaries of state, including Anne-Marie Trevelyan and Nadhim Zahawi are interviewing for positions from today. Successful candidates can get in touch here…
Read the list in full below…
Despite the obvious enthrallment of the LibDem leadership election, the question on the minds of Westminster SpAds today is who was behind the suspected recent hacking of a government mobile phone belonging to one of No. 10’s EU negotiation team members. Fellow SpAds were alerted to the security breach after the SpAd left a number of WhatsApp chats and Guido understands the civil service advised them to wipe the phone clean. Who would have most to gain from hacking the phone of a member of the country’s Brexit negotiation team?
