I was once a special adviser — the sort of job belonging to the shouty people in The Thick Of It, only not many special advisers actually work like that. Mostly you are trying to join up bits of government, chase people to get things done, worry about the money, and, if you are lucky, catch disasters before they happen. You have to do all this while working very closely with civil servants, and there’s only two ways that can go. Either you decide they are the enemy, getting in the way of all your bright ideas. Or they become allies in the mad, frustrating world of government.
On the first day I started at the Department for Transport, the most senior civil servant of all — the Permanent Secretary
Philip Rutnam — asked me into his office. I expected an awkward warning about not leaking things (I never did). Actually, the conversation went differently. “Julian,” he began, “something really terrible is about to happen and I have to tell you about it.” I gulped. How bad could this be?
It turned out that the department had messed up badly on a contract to run trains on the West Coast mainline from Euston. We had to confess, sort things out and keep the trains running. We could have diverted anger away from ministers by blaming Philip — but we needed a solution, not a scapegoat.
It was the start of four years of working closely with a clever, decent, committed man who had a job in government because he wanted to make Britain a better place.
The fact that he has now resigned spectacularly after falling out with the Home Secretary,
Priti Patel, says a lot more about her than him.
Philip isn’t flash: the tie he wore for his
powerful resignation statement at the weekend was at the muted end of unexciting. When I went out for dinner with him early on in my job I eyed up the wine list. After some persuasion, he went for a small dry sherry.
But that’s exactly the sort of person we need as an official of state: someone clever who can get things done while politicians go out and make the case for their plans and get elected.
That’s the hard bit of government: making things happen. My friend Tim Leunig, now a Treasury official, was all over the papers yesterday because of an email he sent about farming. He’s one of the cleverest and nicest people I know, and that means he says what he thinks and challenges the system. We need people like that in government. Tim has actually spent much of the last two years trying to help farmers by replacing the mad subsidy system with something better for them and nature.
He doesn’t want to be famous. Like Philip, he’ll be mortified to make the news. Both of them know the way you make this country better isn’t by boasting about how radical you are to friendly journalists, and then blaming the system when it turns out nothing happens. Instead, you must use your brain, work hard and push for change. Sometimes things go wrong. They always will. It’s how you overcome this that counts
