The Secret Life of Special Advisers

By Peter Cardwell

"A cracking read by a great writer." – Chris Mason, BBC political editor
"A rare, fascinating and funny look at life in the corridors of power." – Isabel Hardman, author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians and Spectator assistant editor
"It's the book we have long needed." – Michael Crick
"A timely look at how some of the key relationships in Westminster work, and how they sometimes misfire." – Laura Kuenssberg, BBC presenter and former political editor
***
Shadowy geniuses whispering, Rasputin-like, into the ears of our elected politicians under a cloak of secrecy, or a crucial but undervalued cog in the machinery of government? … Or just a rag-tag band of weirdos and misfits?
Despite the acres of speculation devoted to special advisers from Alastair Campbell to Dominic Cummings, their role is much misunderstood. Who are the people Piers Morgan once called 'these miserable little creatures' and just how much influence do they have?
Peter Cardwell served as SpAd to four Cabinet ministers, acting as media adviser, political fixer, troubleshooter and occasional wardrobe consultant. In this candid, compelling and frequently hilarious insider account, he reveals what the job really involves, from dealing with counter-terror emergencies in Cobra to explaining to the Justice Secretary what a dental dam is, to having your inside leg measured in a government office.
Packed with advice on navigating the perks and pitfalls of the job, The Secret Life of Special Advisers will inform and entertain anyone who has ever wondered what these mysterious figures really do all day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Biteback Publishing
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781785906329

Peter Cardwell

Peter Cardwell was appointed by two successive Prime Ministers as special adviser to two Northern Ireland Secretaries, a Home Secretary, a Housing Secretary and then to the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, delivering tactical and strategic advice, crisis management and media handling. He is an award-winning broadcaster, public speaker and political commentator.

Book preview

A rare, fascinating and funny look at life in the corridors of power. This book will teach you how Westminster really works – as well as how it fails.

ISABEL HARDMAN, AUTHOR OF WHY WE GET THE WRONG POLITICIANS

This is a cracking read by a great writer. And an insight into what really happens behind those doors us reporters rarely get to nip through.

CHRIS MASON, BBC POLITICAL EDITOR

Peter allows you to peep behind the curtain of a much caricatured but little understood part of our political universe. With the structures of government in flux, it’s a timely look at how some of the key relationships in Westminster work, and how they sometimes misfire.

LAURA KUENSSBERG, BBC PRESENTER AND FORMER POLITICAL EDITOR

"It’s the book we have long needed. Peter Cardwell takes us into the mysterious world of the political aides at the heart of Whitehall – the shadowy fixers who oil relations between ministers, mandarins and the media. Some special advisers are more powerful than many Cabinet ministers; many are much cannier operators.

Cardwell’s book fizzes with stories and humour from his experience as an adviser to four different ministers and his years as a Westminster journalist with BBC Newsnight, ITV and Sky."

MICHAEL CRICK, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

To my parents, Ken and Sandra Cardwell; to my best friend, Michael Selby; and to James Brokenshire, all of whom have been tremendously, unfailingly supportive in the peaks and the troughs of the past four years.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Preface

1 From the Time of SpAdam: A History of Special Advisers

2 Welcome to the SpAd House: Recruitment

3 The Devil’s SpAdvocate: Policy SpAds

4 Calling a SpAd a SpAd: Media SpAds

5 You Don’t Have to Be SpAd to Work Here: Civil Servants

6 SpAds on Tour: Conference

7 Breaking SpAd: When Things Go Wrong

8 Truly, SpAdly, Deeply: Elections

9 Far From the SpAdding Crowd: Getting Sacked

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Dramatis Personae

Timeline of Roles

About the Author

Index

Copyright

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

Walking Prime Minister Boris Johnson from the Speaker’s House in Parliament to his car in October 2021, he was kind enough to say that I had been ‘a great help and worked very hard’ on the 2019 election. I had been deputy campaign manager for my former boss Robert Buckland, then the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary. ‘Get Brexit Done’ is the slogan most people remember from that election, with Boris winning an enormous eighty-strong majority for the Conservatives.

‘Thank you, Prime Minister,’ I said. ‘Yes, we managed to almost triple Robert’s majority in South Swindon. The question historians will mull over, I imagine, is whether that was more to do with you, or more to do with me?’

Boris chuckled at my cheeky remark before he and his political secretary Declan Lyons climbed into their armoured convoy, bound for Downing Street. It was a moment of light relief after a heavy day. We had been saying goodbye to my great friend and first boss in politics, James Brokenshire. The day began at James’s funeral in Bexley, south-east London, followed by a wake at the Speaker’s House, hosted by Deputy Speaker Dame Eleanor Laing MP. James died of cancer on Thursday 7 October 2021, and, as you will appreciate when you read this book, his death has hit me very hard.

I was honoured to have been asked by James’s wife, Cathy, to assist with some of the funeral arrangements. My final duty was to chaperone the Prime Minister through the assembled mourners before he made a very kind, funny speech about James.

Amidst the sadness there was much laughter, too, as MPs, lords, friends, family and former staff reminisced about James. It was good to catch up with a number of people I had not seen in some time, including some off-duty police protection officers who had so bravely and diligently guarded James round-the-clock when he was Northern Ireland Secretary. I was told that, on hearing of James’s initial diagnosis in 2018 which necessitated his resignation from the Cabinet, one of the officers had cancelled his leave so he could ensure James had a friendly face to drive him to his hospital appointments.

Since this book was originally published in late 2020, a number of colleagues I hadn’t heard from for a while have been in touch, mostly in a friendly way (although there were one or two details revealed that some weren’t massively thrilled about). I don’t think I have lost any friends. One former colleague, homelessness guru Jeremy Swain (see Chapter 3), rang me to recount his own recollection of meeting me for the first time, just days into my tenure as special adviser at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in May 2018.

‘I had been warned you were a bit unusual, not the Tory type the civil service usually deals with,’ Jeremy told me.

I went into your office and you were wearing big blue shorts and a T-shirt which read ‘I’m silently correcting your grammar’. After we had a pretty short and sharp chat where we challenged each other quite robustly, you sent the two other civil servants from my team out of the room, so it was just the two of us. I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen next. Then you said, ‘Jeremy, you seem to know what you’re talking about. You will tell me at any stage if I’m talking bollocks on homelessness, won’t you?’

Jeremy and I swiftly became firm friends, and indeed we recounted this tale as a double act when Jeremy asked me to speak on a leadership course with which he is involved. Midway through, I unbuttoned my shirt, Superman-style, to reveal I was wearing the notorious ‘I’m silently correcting your grammar’ T-shirt underneath. I even flogged a few books to them too, thanks to Jeremy.

Other readers reminded me of some of my signature achievements in politics not included in the book. For example, I hold the dubious honour of having introduced not one but two members of Her Majesty’s Cabinet to a clip of The Only Way Is Essex star Gemma Collins falling through the stage at the Radio 1 Teen Awards. I subsequently introduced one of those Cabinet ministers to a further clip of Gemma on a phone call to a fan suffering from kidney failure, to whom Gemma offered a free tote bag with her order from The GC’s emporium. It ended with Gemma saying to the camera crew, ‘See? I change people’s lives.’ I can still hear James Brokenshire’s raucous laughter at the reality star’s ludicrous remark.

I was also told a few ‘I wish you’d put this in the book’ stories by certain government insiders, especially about ministers within departments who quite simply didn’t get on. The junior minister whose nickname was ‘The Constipated Peacock’ because of how he comes across in media interviews. The minister who found a special adviser so completely tiresome and head-girlish that she was nicknamed ‘Hermione’ after the Harry Potter character. And not forgetting the Cabinet minister and their deputy who enjoy such a poor relationship that when the Cabinet minister was strongly criticised in public, precipitating a political crisis, the junior minister was handing out Celebrations chocolates around the office. ‘Their relationship is a bit like Taiwan and China,’ a Cabinet minister in another department told me. ‘They don’t officially recognise one another.’

Many of those featured in this book, whether by name or anonymously, have since changed jobs, been sacked or resigned. It is less than two years since the book was originally published, but the fact there has been such a change of personnel in government emphasises its central theme – that politics is an extremely transient business. The Partygate scandal, which saw totally unacceptable behaviour by a number of special advisers and others, has seen some rightly lose their jobs. It’s also seen a good deal of moralising about drinking, which I have tried to avoid in my media commentary, being a teetotaller who stopped drinking in large part because of the Westminster alcohol culture. Those with huge amounts of power at the apex of the Westminster system at one moment may be sitting in their spare room in their jogging bottoms the next, knocking out churlish blogs about their former employer (sorry, Dominic).

Not every critic liked the book. Andrew Gimson’s review on ConservativeHome concluded: ‘Cardwell belongs to the May interlude, a period about which nothing brilliant has yet been published.’ Sir Max Hastings wrote in the Sunday Times: ‘Cardwell emerges from his own narrative as engagingly gauche,’ a sentiment I might have inscribed on my headstone. Others were kinder. Many said it was a good political career guide, an insightful read or even just a good laugh. One former Labour minister told me he read it twice, while a Liberal Democrat contacted me to say it was the best book he had ever read about politics.

On BBC Radio 4 one Saturday evening, I was being interviewed about political books and was asked to name my own favourite, which is Power Trip, by the former Labour special adviser Damian McBride. I understand from sources deep inside the Labour Party that McBride was thrilled not only that I had mentioned his book, some seven years after its original publication, but also that I had praised its brilliance while my fellow Radio 4 guest, McBride’s long-time rival Alastair Campbell, was forced to listen on the line.

As well as punditing on a variety of broadcast outlets, my new career – or perhaps a revival of my old one – is as a staff broadcaster, as I am now on the airwaves daily as TalkRadio’s political editor. I was appointed in September 2021 and present some programmes for the station too. I love newsrooms and missed them as a special adviser; Whitehall offices are quieter, with less deeply inappropriate humour.

On my first day back as a journalist, I remember overhearing someone in the office saying, ‘Do you not think Justin Bieber has become more passive aggressive on Twitter in the last six months?’ More recently, one of the TalkRadio producers told me he had just rung the actor Christopher Biggins to ask him on. ‘Oh, I can’t possibly come on at that time, darling!’ exclaimed Biggins. ‘I’m playing Zoom Bingo with Linda Lusardi and Mr Motivator, and it’s my turn to draw the balls.’

I’ve enjoyed writing – in my own name, rather than that of my bosses – for publications including The Spectator, the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Irish Times and Mace magazine. I’ve spoken about politics to many audiences through podcasts, PhD seminars, veterans’ groups, corporate gatherings and after-dinner speeches. I am also available for weddings and bar mitzvahs at reasonable rates.

More seriously, two articles I was privileged to write were after James’s death. One was for the Municipal Journal, the weekly publication which is the bible of local government. Its kind editor, Heather Jameson, asked me to outline some of James’s achievements as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.

I wrote:

Landing the first actual uplift for local government in nearly a decade in the 2018 Budget. Persuading the Treasury to take seriously the issue of cladding and putting hundreds of millions of pounds into private sector remediation after the strong private objections of then-Chancellor Philip Hammond.

Arresting the increase in rough sleeping, leading to the first fall in the figures for nine years. Maintaining the upward housing supply in the face of huge Brexit uncertainty for the market. Supporting and encouraging his team of junior ministers, three of whom – Rishi Sunak, Dominic Raab and Kit Malthouse – now sit around the Cabinet table.

These are just some of James Brokenshire’s numerous achievements over his fifteen months in the ministry’s Marsham Street offices.

They led Sir Peter Bottomley MP, not a member of Parliament known to be gushing, to tell the House: ‘My right hon. friend and his team have, over the past year or so, made more progress than was made in the previous twenty years, which is greatly to be welcomed.’

In an earlier piece, published in the Belfast Telegraph two days after James’s death, I wrote:

The James Brokenshire I will remember was not just the member of parliament, the secretary of state, the brilliant lawyer who became a partner in a huge London law firm at the age of 31 and turned his back on a lucrative career for a lifetime of public service. Because James Brokenshire was so much more than even those remarkably impressive achievements. Rather, I will remember the man who took politics incredibly seriously and himself not that seriously at all. The man who loved trashy telly and long walks, baking cakes, making stupid puns, spending Saturday evening slumped on the sofa in front of The X Factor alongside his beautiful kids and his devoted wife, Cathy, with whom he enjoyed one of the strongest marriages I have ever seen.

I will remember the humanity, the generosity, the thoughtfulness of a man who was running a government department, yet still found time to bake me a birthday cake. I will remember the greatest and most faithful friend I could ever ask for.

When a friend dies, the worst thing is regretting the things not said. On reflection, writing this book was one of the very best and most fun things I have done in life. But, more than that, The Secret Life of Special Advisers says everything I wanted to say about James. After James’s death, the Sunday Times columnist Robert Colvile called the book ‘very largely a love letter to James Brokenshire’, and I did certainly feel a considerable sense of brotherly love, admiration and respect for James. Fretting about a paragraph I had inserted in the original manuscript, I asked a friend whether James might be annoyed by it. ‘Peter,’ he said, ‘James Brokenshire comes out of your book better than God comes out of the Bible!’

Amongst all the fun, nonsense, frustration, bureaucracy, petty squabbles and more important arguments about how the country is run outlined in this book, what I took from writing it – and what you might too from reading it – is that politicians, special advisers and civil servants have a really tough job. They operate in a perilous atmosphere full of its own form of risk. Which is why, when I found a true friend and the best boss I have ever had (and suspect I will ever have), we connected and formed a firm friendship that was both productive and brilliant. And that James read this book before he died means that nothing – not a word – has been left unsaid. And that brings me great comfort.

So it is therefore apt that it is to James’s memory, and to his brilliant wife Cathy and their three wonderful children, Sophie, Jemma and Ben, that I dedicate this paperback edition.

Peter Cardwell

London

June 2022

PREFACE

Until Dominic Cummings made clear he disapproved of the practice, special advisers – ministerial aides personally appointed by UK Cabinet ministers as their political sidekicks – often worked from home on the occasional Friday.

Having spent Monday to Thursday being grilled on matters of state in the gilded rooms of Whitehall and Parliament, their Secretary of State generally will work in their constituency on Friday, spending the day in a dingy community hall at a constituency surgery, dealing with planning, drains, passports and sewerage.

This life of contrasts means ministers often deal with vastly differing matters simultaneously. I remember armed police officers guarding my main employer in government, James Brokenshire, in an airport one afternoon as we waited for a flight to Belfast, as liveried waiting staff served us tea. James leafed through official documents in his ministerial red box when his phone rang with an urgent matter. The lock on his constituency office door was broken and he needed to organise a locksmith immediately. Such is the nature of ministerial life.

As special adviser to four Cabinet ministers in four departments for three and a half years, I found my own life was full of contrasts too in the very odd, unpredictable job I did alongside about 100 other SpAds across government. Whether that involved purchasing a pair of rainbow-coloured underpants for a junior minister, explaining what a dental dam is to the Justice Secretary, or having your inside leg measured in a government office, SpAds featured in this book have done it all.

So this Friday, 22 February 2019, I took the opportunity to work from home. I spent the morning in my university hoodie and jogging bottoms, happily tapping away at my laptop and working on my two phones. I often got a lot more done at home than when I was in the office, as I avoided constant interruption by civil servants. Two groups of people always work on two phones, by the way: SpAds and drug dealers.

That morning, I got a call from a senior Times journalist, Oliver Wright. Had I heard, he asked, that the controversial housing giant Persimmon was rumoured to be about to post profits of £1 billion? I had not. As I was special adviser to the then Housing Secretary, James Brokenshire, Wright was asking me for comment. I did a little bit of digging before coming up with a short comment from ‘a source close to James Brokenshire’, as media special advisers are frequently described in the press. I pinged the lines through to Wright and thought little more of it. It was quite strongly worded; the company had not always acted entirely properly in regard to the government Help to Buy scheme, which allows first-time buyers to get a foot on the property ladder.

I checked Twitter that night for the front pages of the next day’s papers, which are put online about 10.30 p.m. The Times screamed: ‘Help to Buy house giant faces loss of contract’, with the first paragraph of a story by Wright and two other journalists reading:

Britain’s most profitable housebuilder faces being stripped of its right to sell Help to Buy homes after allegations of poor standards and hidden punitive charges. James Brokenshire, the housing secretary, is reviewing Persimmon’s participation in the government scheme, which accounted for half of the homes it built last year, The Times has learnt.

A few paragraphs later, Wright quoted the source (me):

‘James has become increasingly concerned by the behaviour of Persimmon in the last 12 months,’ the source said. ‘Leasehold, build quality, their leadership seemingly not getting [that] they’re accountable to their customers are all points that have been raised by the secretary of state privately.

‘Given that contracts for the 2021 extension to Help to Buy are being reviewed shortly it would be surprising if Persimmon’s approach wasn’t a point of discussion.’

They added: ‘James is clear any new government funding scheme will not support the unjustified use of leasehold for new homes, including Help to Buy.’

All of this was absolutely fine, and The Times acted entirely honourably in publishing it. A few other journalists from other outlets asked me for similar thoughts over the weekend, but aside from the Times front page it didn’t strike me as a huge story.

Then came the following Monday morning, when the markets opened.

The story – which was largely the result of my text to Wright as James’s spokesman – resulted in a 4.9 per cent drop in the value of Persimmon by market capitalisation. In layman’s terms, the company’s worth fell by £387 million in one day.

My phone was red-hot the whole day, with journalists asking for further detail about the story and whether other, similar companies could be affected. A very wise civil servant urged caution in my words to journalists, as the markets were moving rapidly and other housing companies were watching their share price too.

The drama of that day rammed home the importance of being very careful about what we said to the media. It wasn’t just during my previous posting with James at the Northern Ireland Office – in a part of the UK where in my experience people often literally go out of their way to be offended – that every word mattered.

But sitting in your jogging bottoms in your bedroom on a Friday morning, it’s hard to anticipate that sending a text message could create a series of events which end up with nearly £400 million wiped off the value of an enormous company.

People who did the job I did, special adviser (the contraction ‘SpAd’ is a more recent innovation), have been a major part of political life in this country since the 1960s. Some contemporary SpAds are well known to anyone who follows politics: Alastair Campbell, Damian McBride, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, for example. And one person, a 2020 survey by the pollsters YouGov suggests, is actually known to 40 per cent of the UK public, with a further 23 per cent at least recognising his name. He is, of course, the aforementioned Dominic Cummings, the most senior aide in Boris Johnson’s Downing Street – the man I worked alongside for six months.

That is, before he sacked me.

But despite acres of newsprint devoted to Dominic, many volumes of diaries by Alastair Campbell, various insider accounts by Jonathan Powell and others, and an explosive, jaw-droppingly indiscreet tome by Damian McBride – which is the best book I have ever read about Westminster politics – what special advisers actually do from day to day is still a mystery to many.

The past decade has been a defining one for the United Kingdom, its politics and especially for the Conservative Party – moving out of opposition, into coalition government and then stand-alone Conservative governments, via four elections and two referendums. It has been a defining period, too, in terms of what it actually means to be a special adviser at the heart of Whitehall. The dynamic nature of politics has necessitated huge changes in the ways SpAds operate and the level of influence they wield. As I outline in Chapter 1, SpAds did not properly exist until 1964; now, six decades later, no government can function without them. With that in mind, amongst the questions this book asks are: how did this almost completely unaccountable group become so powerful, and is that a desirable thing?

One of my bosses in government, the former Home Secretary Amber Rudd, once asked me which wing of the Conservative Party I am on. ‘Amber,’ I answered, ‘I’m on the sunshine, lollipops and rainbows wing of the party.’ So this does not aim to be a partisan book; rather, one readers of all political persuasions can enjoy. I will attempt to lift the lid on who SpAds are and what they do, how Cabinet ministers use and interact with them and how much influence they actually have in relations with the civil service and No. 10.

It is quite a personal story, in part about the triumphs and disasters of being an adviser; sometimes a sort of media-savvy Jeeves character, armed only with a mobile phone, the government’s ‘lines to take’ email for that day and a Snickers bar (the latter in case your minister has a meltdown and needs a sugar hit).

Loyalty and friendship are qualities I came to value very strongly in the sometimes shark-infested waters of politics and, while at times indiscreet, I don’t believe anything I reveal in this book will substantively damage anyone. It’s certainly not designed to. I retain the greatest admiration for anyone, from any party, who becomes an adviser, mostly putting their life on hold for a few years in the service of what they believe to be a greater good.

I hope anyone interested in politics will find some nuggets of helpful advice, fun anecdotes and sometimes almost unbelievable stories about what actually happens in a SpAd’s life.

And it’s a job that doesn’t last for ever. A TV interviewer asked me in the days following my sacking, ‘What was it like to, well, to, erm, er—’ I interrupted him: ‘To be dumped the day before Valentine’s Day from a three-and-a-half-year relationship? Not great to be honest, but I am very much an adherent of Dr Seuss, who said, Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.’

And there were plenty of smiles along the way. I travelled in the Home Secretary’s car with armed police officers, discussing what we would say to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at a Foreign Office reception as the police opened a road for us. I sat by James’s side as we met the President of Colombia in Belfast, who was over on a state visit. I advised the Prime Minister what