Citizens came quickly to realise that there was a pyramid of rights, and that they were at the base. It was a recognition that marked the beginning of the unravelling of the Conservatives as a potential party of government.

Ireland has not travelled as far down this road. In 2024, the UK had 128 special advisors with a payroll cost of around €16m. We had 40, costing us in excess of €4m annually.

Their use has become a fixture in Irish politics since the early 1990s, when the Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition began their widespread appointment across government departments. Their employment has to be carried out in accordance with Section 11 of the Public Service Management Act 1997.

They have not become a matter of high controversy, for now, although it might be worth asking where the Spads were when €6m was being spaffed during the Arts Council’s IT debacle. But we can look across the Irish Sea and appreciate the rise of one of our own.

A new book, Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer, credits Macroom’s Morgan McSweeney as, if not the éminence grise, then at least the red-headed resurrectionist of that party’s position in British politics.

McSweeney, who is the prime minister’s chief of staff, having replaced a short-lasting predecessor, Sue Gray, who also has strong Irish connections, is identified as the strategist who took Labour from abject defeat under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 to landslide victory in 2024.

After moving to London as a 17 year old, he worked as a labourer; started, and then dropped, a degree, and worked on a kibbutz in Israel before going back to Middlesex University to study politics and marketing.

The Irishman, the book suggests, remains unknown to most of British electorate, although he may be a more familiar figure to those who use the Heathrow to Cork Aer Lingus flight regularly. The authors, journalists working for the Times and Sunday Times, portray McSweeney as a 21st-century Machiavelli, dedicated to toppling Corbyn and his fellow ideologues and to making Labour as electable as they were under Tony Blair through the use of data and “messaging”.

Most of the political stories emerging from Westminster in the past few weeks — Keir Starmer’s acting lessons, the assertion that he “acts like an HR manager, not a leader”, that his shopping mentor and Labour donor Waheed Alli likes to make his mark on government policy — have their origins in this account of McSweeney’s ascent to power.

These claims may or may not be true, or are made simply to help sell a book. It wouldn’t be the first time. But what it also reminds us is that, as active voters, we should demand to know as much about those who advise ministers as those who seek our support on the hustings. As a group, they exercise power without the tiresome burdens of responsibility.

As the British government was once told in different circumstances, this is the “prerogative of the harlot through the ages”.

Influence without consequence does nothing for transparency in government, and even less for accountability. It will surely lead to a further erosion of trust in democracy.

History lesson

It is perhaps appropriate that Munich should be chosen as the location for America to provide a lecture to allies on the war in Ukraine and our responsibilities. It is, after all, where
another small country was sold out by so-called “Great Powers”. Judging by their actions last week, it seems unlikely that either Donald Trump or JD Vance have much of a grasp on history. However, the model they should focus on is the secret pact signed by Soviet and German foreign ministers Molotov and von Ribbentrop 85 years ago this summer.

The Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact divided Europe into “spheres of influence” and led, almost immediately, to the simultaneous invasion of Poland. It’s the textbook example of how a world war can be started without reference to anyone else. Just as well then that, in the US president, we have a self-
acknowledged master of “the art of the deal”.

We can all sleep more soundly at night in that knowledge...