This week new SpAds are excitedly waiting for their contracts to be confirmed as they enjoy the heady fun of entering government. Most haven’t had the formal nod yet…
Things are a little different this time, though, as their employment isn’t nearly as secure as usual. Guido hears they are being put on strict 4-month probationary contracts. A move described by ex-Tory SpAds as simultaneously “brutal, nuts” and “smart”…
Westminster could see a fair few dour faces (accompanied by CVs) come November. Is Labour not confident in its current pool of advising talent?
Well-respected Treasury media SpAd Cameron Brown officially left the role on 18th April. 32 days later there is still no replacement…
Jeremy Hunt’s SpAd team is down to only three, which is slim compared to some departments – the Home Office has accrued a whopping seven after taking on two new hires in January. The empty role is an important one, especially as the government Treasury team prepares election battle calculations, which require wrangling with hacks to receive positive coverage. The dominant view among fatigued government staff is that it would be folly to serve in the gruelling role for mere weeks or months before the “boss loses his job“. One SpAd quips: “Jeremy thought he didn’t need one…”
Downing Street could transfer a capable media SpAd to the role – will no-one take the job? For the latest updates on the SpAd exodus you know where to go…
Despite a flurry of speculation about the possibility of a June or July election – which was a talking point before the locals – the chances of that are now basically nil. There was a brief spike in nerves ahead of the PM’s speech on Monday – but that turned out to be irrelevant for the election date. The FT reports that Labour staff were previously on a strict holiday ban which has now been lifted by Labour HQ. Wait until the unions hear about those working practices…
Tory staff were never put on a holiday ban at all – and MPs of all parties have also been busily booking up summer retreats. Chris Philp just this morning said he’d booked holiday for August and, when asked if the election would be in summer, said: “I hope not“. It remains interesting that no whip has been imposed on summer constituency campaigning for Tory MPs, as it has been in previous cycles. They’ll be holding more piña coladas than clipboards…
Any July or August general election would have been highly unusual – the last August election was in 1895, and the last July one immediately after World War Two. It looks like the current SW1 status quo will continue over the summer break. While an autumn or winter election remains most likely, the legal deadline for polling day after this parliament is Tuesday 28 January 2025. He couldn’t, could he…
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…
The vast majority of talented SpAds have already left Sunak’s sinking ship and shifted to the private sector. SW1 staple the British Venture Capital Association generously invited twenty SpAds and other advisers to a boozy four-hour final schmooze-session last night at All Bar One on Villiers Street. In attendance were Downing Street’s Callum Tucker, David Goss, and Mary Burns, along with Sunak’s favourite private equity giant Blackstone. They’re not taking Labour advisers to budget All Bar One, that’s for sure…
Teams from media monitoring and policy in CCHQ also showed up along with dark arts Conservative Research Department staff. Corporate attendees were told: “Members may want to consider whether there are businesses in their portfolio that would be suitable for a ministerial visit, in case you have the opportunity to discuss that with the relevant adviser.” Better squeeze in those visits pretty quickly…
A senior Westminster source tells Guido: “Sunak can stop telling everyone else to concentrate on fighting Labour when he’s given half his team post-election jobs in the private sector and the other half are off down the job-fair. They’ve given up.” The pre-election Tory SpAd job round wrapped up about a year ago…
Guido was the first to report former Our Future, Our Choice campaigner Will Dry’s ascension to No 10 in 2022. Dry was best known in SW1 for parading around with Femi during the Brexit years attempting to reverse the referendum result. It has now emerged he left his polling role in Downing Street in November and has been working with the Conservative Britain Alliance, best known for commissioning the YouGov mega poll predicting a 1997-style wipeout for the Tories under Sunak. Dry says defeat is on the way:
“Everyone in this country can see just how colossal the challenges we face are. Sadly, it became clear to me we weren’t providing the bold, decisive action required to overcome those challenges. You cannot dent them without internalising just how fundamentally broken our political system is.
I further concluded, again sorrowfully, that the Conservatives are heading for the most almighty of defeats. Be in no doubt: we are on course for at least a decade of Labour rule. And if Farage comes back, the Conservative Party essentially won’t exist by Christmas“.
Dry headed up research and polling at No 10 and is now working to bring down Sunak. Was he ever a wise hire for a government that was supposed to get Brexit done?
