Letwin at a westminster policy hearing, 2006. Photo: cooperniall. Flickr. Creative Commons. The rise and fall of Oliver Letwin reveals what has changed, and precisely what has stayed the same, in British politics since June 23. Theresa May’s decision to boot Letwin out as the head of the EU Policy Unit and bring David Davis in dramatizes the high-wire stakes of post-Brexit negotiations. While Corbynites punch at parliamentary sovereignty from positions staked out below it, the government’s Policy Unit serenely sucks its legitimacy from above the Conservative majority in the Commons with very little oversight and only the slimmest of democratic mandates. This should be a cause for alarm to anyone who isn’t currently sitting in 70, Whitehall.
This should be a cause for alarm to anyone who isn’t currently sitting in 70, Whitehall.
Oliver Letwin is the only son of prominent Conservative intellectuals. After a scholarship at Eton he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge and stayed on to do a PhD in philosophy. He joined Margaret Thatcher’s Policy Unit at No. 10 in 1983. In public domain images he can be seen in tweed jackets above voluminous red corduroys almost always pasted alongside inconsequential constituency news. This lack of public interest is striking considering that Letwin was, until Theresa May’s bonfire of the Cameronites, one of the most important figures in British politics for the past six years.
