(November 20, 2024)

Though it has grown over the past fifty years, the Policy Unit today still comprises fewer than thirty special advisers and junior Whitehall officials. This little platoon tends to be most effective when it acts as both the prime minister’s “eyes and ears”, to borrow Wilson’s phrase, and what Sarah Hogg, John Major’s policy chief, termed “the grit and oil in the government machine.” In other words, the Policy Unit works best by offering the prime minister unvarnished intelligence and advice about the direction of departmental policy, while giving Whitehall strategic clarity about what the prime minister wants or doesn’t want.