It is right that political advisers are paid out of public funds

Advisers such as Dominic Cummings play an important role in our democracy

Money well spent? Circa £99,000 buys you one Dominic Cummings (Reuters)

Remember those terrible special advisers who were politicising the civil service under New Labour? How the Conservatives laid into them for their crimes of “spin” and wasting public money?

Well, one of my pre-Christmas rituals is to celebrate the publication of the official list of special advisers and their salaries and to revel in past Tory hypocrisy. This year’s, published on Friday, was a particularly joyous occasion for a sectarian Blairite. Once upon a time, David Cameron promised to cut their numbers to “cut the cost of politics”. It was a shortsighted and opportunist pledge, soon broken.

There are now, we learned, 108 special advisers in the government, up from 99 last year. Not only that, but this is one more than the previous peak of 107, reached at the end of the coalition government in 2015.

That year’s publication was another memorably festive occasion, because Nick Clegg had been particularly sanctimonious about special advisers when he was in opposition, saying they should be paid for by their parties. Funnily enough, after a few years in government he realised the Liberal Democrat wing of the coalition was being outgunned by the Conservatives because it did not have enough politically committed advisers. So he hired 20 of them – 20! – for the deputy prime minister’s office. And the taxpayer picked up the tab.

It is in fact quite right that special advisers should be paid out of public funds. They are an important feature of a functioning democracy. Parties are elected to carry out their programme, and elected politicians can do this more effectively if they have political support in addition to the impartial civil service.

Whatever you think of him, Dominic Cummings (salary band £95,000-£99,999) helps Boris Johnson to deliver what the people who voted for him want him to deliver.

No one suggests, any more, that MPs and ministers should not be paid by the taxpayer, and the same applies to a small number of political appointees. That small number is now higher than it ever was under Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, just as it was higher under them than under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, but I do not think the numbers are excessive.

Every Christmas, therefore, allow me to recall the parable of the sinner that repenteth and rejoice in the conversion of the Conservative Party to the eternal wisdom of New Labour: political advisers are a good thing, and striking poses in opposition is always going to make you look silly later.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator