Prime Minister Boris Johnson's chief adviser is calling for "weirdos and misfits" to apply for jobs in Downing Street, as part of a shake-up of how Britain's government does business.
Dominic Cummings outlined what he said was the need to diversify the skills and backgrounds of policy-makers and advisers, in a nearly 3,000-word post on his blog Thursday.
The special adviser, who headed the referendum campaign for Britain to leave the EU, said the government wanted to hire "an unusual set of people with different skills and backgrounds."
They included data scientists, software developers, economists, policy experts, project managers, communications experts, as well as "weirdos and misfits with odd skills." He said the need to change was because of "profound problems at the core of how the British state makes decisions," such as not having civil servants with dedicated, long-term expertise. It was also because Brexit required large policy and decision-making structure changes, he added.
Johnson, who won a comfortable majority in a general election last month, has reportedly promised "seismic changes" to the civil service. Cummings believes it needs to have fewer arts graduates educated, like him, at private schools and "Oxbridge," the leading universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Instead, he wants "super-talented weirdos" and "some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole."
