Kemi Badenoch’s reshuffle promised a revitalised economic team. Now Mr S can reveal how it is being staffed. A missive from the new shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith has found its way to Steerpike‘s inbox, announcing that the Conservative Economy Unit is ‘up, running and looking forward to working with colleagues’.
Mr S understands that the party will be pushing big on the economy and their credentials this year.
Leading it is James Heywood, appointed policy adviser and co-ordinator and, in Griffith’s words, the ‘go to’ point for colleagues on economic policy. Heywood arrives having worked as the previous shadow chancellor Mel Stride’s senior political adviser, with experience as a government special adviser and working for the Commons policy research unit. He also has spent time in thinktank land at the Centre for Social Justice, where he worked as head of debt and financial inclusion and before that running welfare and opportunity at the Centre for Policy Studies. He was also part of the team that drafted the 2024 Conservative manifesto – experience that the party will hope is put to a more successful use this time.
He will not be short of company. Zac Spiro will be providing support for the unit, alongside developing policy with Renewal chief Neil O’Brien, while Oliver Paterson covers the Treasury from Conservative Research Department. In Griffith’s own office, Philip Brenninkmeyer serves as chief of staff and policy adviser with Matthew McPherson on communications, now joined by Robbie Caprari-Sharpe, previously CCHQ’s head of broadcast turned civil servant, and Laurence Fredricks, formerly of thinktank Onward, working on policy research.
Heywood’s brief is to support what Griffith calls the ‘vital role’ of the new unit, led by himself, Claire Coutinho and Richard Fuller – the shadow chancellor, his deputy and the shadow chief secretary charged with fiscal discipline.
The ‘immediate focus’, Griffith writes, is working up ‘any measures to potentially be announced at Conservative party conference,’ now under a month away. It suggests the Tories intend to arrive at their Birmingham conference in October with rather more than a slogan and Mr S understands that the party will be pushing big on the economy and their credentials this year. With a difficult Budget bearing down on Burnham, and Griffith needing to prove he can cut through, what better moment to tool up?
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