Unusual Forces

Populations of special advisers have risen dramatically during the Government's recent difficulties, catching the coalition in a vicious, ultracleggian circle of pledge-breaking. The coalition agreement pledged to limit the number of special advisers, which had risen to eighty or so under New Labour; while the de facto coalition agreement known colloquially as the Conservative manifesto pledged to cut "the scope of Whitehall". The special advisers were subsequently pruned to sixty-six, but have come rampaging back like kudzu and have now reached Blairite levels of profusion just as the coalition attempts to come to terms with its own Brownite maladroitness. The Minister for Ministerial Administrativity, Francis Maude, blamed the plague on "unusual forces"; by which he presumably meant ministers' ever-increasing need for obliging but expendable servants who can carry out the necessary proxy resignations.