The friendliness and expertise of the IfG’s staff, and worthiness of its aims, should not obscure its desire to place the fate of ministers in the hands of mandarins.
The author compares politics to a game of snakes and ladders, but demonstrates that it is actually far harder than that.
This account of three and a half years as a special adviser confirms how trivial and transitory the role can be.
Few people understand better than the Culture Secretary how the government machine works, or fails to work.
The Prime Minister is being urged to employ more women, but here is one who already makes it difficult for him to get away with sloppy thinking.
The Conservative victory in the general election of 2019, on a promise to Get Brexit Done, was a crushing defeat for them.
Perhaps, against all the odds, we will find a way of muddling through and preserve our broad church for a time after the era of Brexit has passed.
The Government should consider setting up a domestic policy Cabinet sub-committee to help alleviate the Brexit bandwidth problem.
Ministers like Amber Rudd have great difficulty finding able SpAds because the Conservative Research Department, which used to train them, has been destroyed.
He made grotesque errors of taste and judgement – see “Rivers of Blood”. But even his critics admit that he was one of the great parliamentarians of the 20th century.
It’s predominately a tight-knit group of former staffers who’ve worked together before. No change there. But it has a more provincial and state school feel.
He represents a proudly provincial conservatism, in which the condition of the striving classes, and of the industries on which they depend, matter a hundred times more than the City of London.
Today is the tenth anniversary of his election as Conservative leader – the most electorally successful one in modern times bar Thatcher.
The early training that David Cameron and his team received in the Conservative Research Department proved decisive.
I hope this work, which entails listening to party members, communities and businesses, will help to shape the future thinking of the Party.