Storm clouds over PM’s Mr Blue Sky

IN OPPOSITION years, Steve would often visit David at home, where they’d talk informally over the issues we were grappling with, and discuss an overall strategy. Then, Monday morning, back at the office, the rest of the team would arrive to find the entire strategy had changed. In government, this method doesn’t work. The PM cannot make decisions and then be persuaded out of them in private.

Even if David wanted to change his mind (and occasionally he does), when decisions are made, minutes are taken and hordes of civil servants begin implementing them. Steve can only put the clock back so many times.

And it is this which largely undermines Steve and erodes his spirit in No 10. He despises ‘the System’ — and never finds a way to work successfully inside it.

Early on, he starts to operate a sort of parallel government, taking meetings across Whitehall with those who think of him as David’s representative on Earth.

At first, we don’t really notice, as we’re so busy. But when he appears to go completely freelance, avoiding our meetings in favour of his own, or commissioning random work, we try to draw him back.

This results in a volcanic eruption. So we try to find other ways to bring Steve closer. Come to the meetings, we suggest. Share our office.

We set up a hot desk for him in the private office, which he never uses.

As Steve’s disillusionment grows, he haunts the building like an unhappy, shoeless ghost. Underlining this is a growing sense of alienation from the one person he came into politics for: David.

When they became friends in the late Eighties, David was attracted by Steve’s compelling intelligence and radical, reforming zeal. Their friendship gave David the political confidence that he could be more than just a boy with a privileged upbringing.

Now things have changed. David still admires Steve’s blue-sky thinking and creativity — and loves him as a friend — but he wants him to find a way to operate that does not put him at odds with everyone and everything.

Yes, Steve has brilliant ideas, but not all of them are either workable or advisable. Moreover, David no longer has time for the ‘Are you with me or against me?’ game.

The rift grows and saddens me. I wish we could find a way through it, because I value and care about Steve. But we don’t.

And when Steve goes to California in 2012 to join his wife, who’s working for Google, I think we all underestimate his sense of betrayal, which later comes back to haunt us.