PM’S key adviser Dominic Cummings posts job advert for civil service ‘weirdos’

BORIS Johnson’s key adviser Dominic Cummings has called for “weirdos” to apply for jobs in Downing Street as he seeks to overhaul decision-making in Government.

Mr Cummings posted an apparent job advert yesterday saying Number 10 wants to hire an “unusual set of people with different skills and backgrounds” to work as special advisers and potentially officials.

The blog post exceeding 2,900 words came amid reports that the Prime Minister is planning “seismic changes” to the civil service.

Mr Cummings, a former Vote Leave director, said he hopes to be made “largely redundant” within a year by the recruitment drive.

He called for officials including “weirdos and misfits with odd skills”, data scientists and policy experts to apply to a gmail account if they think they fit the bill.

Mr Cummings warned that there is “some profound problems at the core of how the British state makes decisions” and that he currently makes decisions “well outside” his “circle of competence”.

And he says the need for change comes with Brexit requiring large policy and decision-making structure changes and a Government with an 80-strong majority having “little need to worry about short-term unpopularity”.

Under a subsection on hiring “super-talented weirdos”, he writes that the Government needs “some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole”.

Mr Cummings’ post came after Rachel Wolf, who helped draw up the blueprint of Tory election pledges, said civil servants could be made to take regular exams to prove they are up to their Whitehall jobs.

Under “seismic” changes being planned by Number 10, she also said that civil servants are “woefully unprepared” for sweeping reforms that Mr Johnson is keen to push through.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, she said the culture of changing jobs every 18 months meant officials aren’t able to build up expertise in any area – and the practice allowed them to escape any mistakes without being held accountable.

She said Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings want to run “the most dynamic state in the world”.

Mr Cummings is a long-standing critic of Whitehall and has said the principle of a permanent Civil Service was “an idea for the history books”.

He has also pointed out that “almost no one is ever fired” and the Civil Service rewards those who “don’t rock the boat” rather than those who work hard but don’t always toe the party line without question.

He spent the past two decades formulating plans to reform the public sector, which he has said “promotes people who focus on being important, not getting important things done”.

Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA, which represents senior civil servants, warned that the PM’S allies are exhibiting a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the modern civil service.