Why the Lobbyists are Taking Over Whitehall

Benjamin Goodwin | Issue 1 | Magazine, Political Consultants

From the Archive

Another administration, another set of Spads – but is there a trend in favour of lobbyists taking on senior advisory positions?

It was another moment of high drama which, in an era apparently dedicated to high drama, runs the risk of being forgotten: this was the unceremonious firing last August of Sonia Khan, a special adviser to Sajid Javid. Khan was summoned to a meeting with Dominic Cummings – a cross between Voldemort and Sun Tzu, if you believe the media – which ended in her being escorted by armed police out of the door.

It subsequently emerged that the chancellor hadn’t been informed of the dismissal. This scene, shocking as it was, is perhaps even better in the reimagining by Marina Hyde in The Guardian: “Did the Saj watch manfully through the net curtains of No 11?” she wondered.

Whether he did or not, there was a sense in which Khan wasn’t escorted out of the door, but out of the revolving door. “Every exit is an entry somewhere else” as Tom Stoppard once put it – and that’s especially true of Westminster, the brightest stage we have, and one with an almost unlimited cast of extras.

So how does this work? You might say there are three types of Spad. There’s the journalist – whisky-soaked and with broken capillaries on their face thanks to too many evenings in the Red Lion. Then we have the wannabe MP (or PM): David Cameron-like in their slickness, observing what power looks like in order to acquire it later on. And then there’s the lobbyist: corporate in a different way, who knows there’s …

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