Introduction
I was very lucky to have worked at the heart of the UK Labour government for a prolonged period between 1997 and 2010 as a political special adviser (a ‘spad’). I worked in various departments for a number of different Secretaries of State including the Treasury and for the Prime Minister in No 10 Downing Street. It is a fascinating, hard and strange job. Some special advisers work mainly on press and presentation – and they have been written about in fiction in things like The Thick of It. I was more behind the scenes and a policy specialist (I am an economist by profession). I hope that these stories give you the reader a feel of what it is like to work as a spad, what the pressures are and which conflicts emerge when one tries to do it well. And I hope they are a good read! In many ways they bring up universal themes present in many other walks of life. While the stories naturally build on some of my own experiences and the personalities I worked with, all are products of my imagination.
Arriving as a Special Adviser
The night of the election victory was sweet indeed. Ed had savoured it. God, it was so good to win. It had been long fought for and although most thought they would win, the campaign had been long and tiring and the polls had narrowed near the end.
But that was just the beginning.
Ed had been appointed as special adviser to the Secretary of State in the Industry department the next day and he could not have been more excited or nervous. He took ages that morning trying to work out what to wear
“Come on, Jane,” he said to his wife, “give me a hand in sorting this out.” She looked up at him in a mildly interested way. The kids still had to get to school and at five and eight, that took a lot of work, not least since Hannah had lost the art scrapbook she was making, that she was supposed to show to her teacher that morning.
Ed had to look the part – but he wasn’t really sure what that was. He put on his brown suit. No that wasn’t right – and he didn’t need Jane to tell him that. It had been dragged from the back of the wardrobe, and he could only just squeeze into it. The brown was just so wrong, and then Jane noticed a bit of a stain on it anyway. In the end he went for a traditional charcoal suit with a plain red tie… Well they had just won the election!
He fumbled over the bag too. The briefcase felt good in his hand and made him feel serious. But as Jane said, it made him look like a Tory. So he tried a couple of backpacks he had, dumping the one that looked a bit like a student out of The Young Ones – but which he had used for his last job – in favour of a dull-looking black one. But still, when he arrived at the Department his hands were trembling so he shoved them hard in his in his trouser pockets. The wait to be met by a civil servant to take him through the process of getting a security pass seemed to take ages. Was he really up to this? Could he actually do it? Would they all find him out?
It was all pretty unexpected. He had worked just a little with the now Secretary of State when the Party was in opposition. But that was a good few years ago. He’d left her to work in a think-tank and assumed the political part of his life was at an end. But he’d come back into the picture during the election campaign, taking leave of absence from his job to help out. And now, here he was.
It was what he had always dreamed of doing, but his stomach was tight. He didn’t know how it would all work out, but he knew his life was about to change big time. This was a serious job with big responsibilities. The way he carried himself would have to change, what he could and could not say in public would be different. And there would be tension at home too as the workload would crowd out much of his domestic life. It really was a new adventure and he half wanted it to all go away.
The first few days were a whirlwind. He attended lots of meeting that were aimed at helping his boss. They were a bit about process – how the private office worked, how the diary worked, what Cabinet committee she would be on, how to get things done. And a lot about the policy of the government as the civil service tried to get its head around what this new government, the first for over a decade, was all about.
In a baffling way, civil servants presented them with folder after folder analysing what the new government had said in their manifesto and other documents, speeches and press conferences. And they had prepared papers on how to pursue them, what the options were, what the dangers were.
It was wild.
They had massively over interpreted words and meaning. They had tried to read between the lines and had got it all wrong – not understanding that so much of the craft in the manifesto drafting was finding words that kept all the parts of the Party together. To say you wanted a partnership with the trade unions did not mean you wanted a formal German style agreement – and he laughed out loud when he read that.
Even more crazily they had found out what he – Ed – had written about before and had assumed that some of this was likely to be on the minister’s agenda. OK, maybe not totally crazy. But to assume that every idea he had thrown around in his think-tank days was now about to become policy was way off the mark. Even Ed didn’t think that would be a good idea.
Ed also had a few one-to-one, private meetings with his boss. Her office was furnished in modern, neat furniture, with white walls and healthy-looking, tall potted plants, It was a far cry from some of the rooms he remembered working in when the Party was in opposition – with stuff crammed in, computer wires trailing everywhere, Blutack and Sellotape marks all over on the walls, empty coffee cups and plates littering the rooms. Here all seemed in order. The computers all worked, staff cleared up and made things look nice. He supposed regular cleaners came in overnight and he wondered how much they got paid.
“So, how do you think it’s going?” he asked Ruth, his boss.
She sighed but smiled. “There is a lot to absorb. An awful lot. It’s exciting and there’s great responsibility, but at the moment I need to find a way to concentrate on the key things.”
“I know,” said Ed, “there is so much material that there is a big danger of getting drowned in it all.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Ed was taking it all in, sat here in an actual Secretary of State’s office. Wow.
Then Ruth got up from her desk, her eyes sharp and focussed as she looked at him.
“What I think we need to do is to get them working on what we want. To show the outside world and the civil service machine what it is we – this government – are all about.”
“And what you are all about,” Ed added quietly.
He agreed strongly. Of course, they could correct some of the misinterpretation of the manifesto that officials had made, and get them working on how to implement the real manifesto promises. But they needed something quicker, faster. More immediate.
“What’s in your mind?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, Ed.” She stared into her tea cup as though she was about to read the leaves. Then her eyes lit up.
“Something that gets across our approach to the economy. We are not about to nationalise the top 100 companies. But we are not free marketers either. We don’t want government taking decisions that the private sector should, but we don’t think keeping government out of the way is the right thing either.”
Ed smiled. He loved the energy in her voice, the excitement in her eyes. He wanted to help her. She was right. Something like that was needed. But he could not work out what it should be. He stared at the picture on the wall behind her, an abstract painting with great splodges of colour and a big black frame, feeling a bit useless.
It was his boss that took the next step.
“I think it might be something around the manufacturing sector. If we publish something about that then it shows we are not just leaving everything to the market and that we are neutral about which sectors of the economy do or don’t do well.” She was warming to her subject with an eager tone in her voice. “And it will go down well with our supporters and MPs – and show we meant what we always said.”
Ed worked until close to midnight on his notes before being encouraged to leave the building by the security guy doing his rounds. He had missed supper, baths and bedtime stories with his children, although he had rung home for a very brief chat to them all. He had no idea what had happened with Hannah’s scrapbook. He felt bad but also exhilarated with the excitement and adrenalin of it all. I wonder if these people on the tube going home know what I do.
Next morning he was up and out of the house before anyone else was awake.
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