Political

Nick Clegg’s civil service team gets a boost as staff redeployed

An intended side-effect of the government’s decision to close the Strategy Unit is that some civil servants are being redeployed to beef up Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s team.

As the Financial Times reports,

The addition of some more policy specialists will be welcome relief for his hard-pressed team. The sheer range of issues he has to handle has left them struggling to cope at times. Clegg’s office was in danger or being branded a Whitehall black hole, from which policy submissions never re-emerge.

That is good news as far as it goes, though as I wrote before,

Whilst it’s sensible to address this … result of coalition, for the Liberal Democrats it isn’t policy support that should really be the top issue – it’s the day to day tactical political communications (as I blogged earlier). That said, better policy support won’t do any harm and there is plenty of discussion within the party and the government about how to improve communications.

Being a success in the coalition isn’t just about the policy, it’s also about the politics, the campaigning and the communication.

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