Hello and one to the Red Box Politics Podcast in the Times I'm Matt Chorley.

What does a special advisor do? A SPAD we've heard a lot about it in the news over the last few days. Well I'm delighted by three

people who know better than anyone because they've just left government and they're

going to lift the lid and go to their air or the dirty laundry in public.

I'm delighted by Salma Charis, former Special Advisor

to Sajid Javid at the Home Office, the Business Department and the Ministry of

Housing. James Johnson was the Polster in Number 10 telling Theresa May how

terribly well the public viewed everything that was going on.

And Paul Harrison, Theresa May's former press secretary, who I once described as the face as the

crumbling regime in the lobby and he only agreed to come on if I repeated that I assume you've now got that on business cards.

I think that yeah I'm getting the printed at the moment it seems exactly exactly

exactly appropriate.

Excellent so let's start then with the first sort of fairly straightforward question because we've heard a lot

about special advisors and who's in charge of them and what they do because Dominic Cummings has gone into number 10

Working for Boris Johnson supposedly taking control of all spads under the sun. So what does a spad do? Let's start with you,

tell them. A spad does really what their minister wants them to do and I think you will never find

two spads alike and it's more of an art form than it is a science I've always felt and normally the breakdown is that you have a spad that looks after policy and a spad that looks after communications and in theory that should work but it never really does I was more focused on the com side but actually you do get

pulled into doing things that are more policy oriented or operationally orientated or basically just whatever the minister is doing at the time.

So it's a bit of an all job kind of position.

And essentially the cabinet minister is the only political person at the top of the

organization and they can't be in every meeting. They can't be across every bit of paper and

so you're just as sort of an extension of of them what it is they want to do.

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