📜 Find your moment to intervene in policy

When there’s a big report that says ‘this sector has the potential to add gazillions of GDP to the economy’, fair play, you’ve hired an economics consultancy. But why should I care? Is there a regional jobs benefit? Does it play to one of the missions if I’m a Labour advisor? The big number itself doesn’t get me interested. The value in a big externality number is the media hook, but what gets an advisor interested is the methodology and how it fits into the way in which the Government will be assessing a problem. When you see these reports, you go straight to the methodology. What you’re looking for is an acknowledgment of the ways in which it can be done in the best possible way by outside analysts. So for instance, if you’re doing analysis on tax you would have seriously engaged with Treasury ready reckoner numbers or what the Office for Budget Responsibility are putting out in their forecasts. Then a Treasury advisor will listen to you because you’re trying to empathise with how they are confronting a problem with officials.

You’ve got to try and make your ideas relevant to Labour’s missions, which are deliberately open-ended. The other route is more ‘what will happen if they don’t confront a particular problem?’ So much of the business of Government is reactive. Things come at you on a daily basis, and there are certain things that Labour are just going to need to address. You need to be clear on why they should bother fixing this now and not put it in the ‘too difficult’ pile. Is it actually going to cause the country serious problems or impinge on the proactive missions agenda?

In Number 10, everything that is coming to you is a serious trade-off or an issue that has been forced by external events or the media. Do I think I smashed it in terms of engagement with externals? No way. There was always something else going on. It’s hard to understate just how time poor you are; I should have carved out more space for proper engagement.