Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, has written a rambling blog calling for “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” to apply for new jobs within No 10.

In a move way outside the usual recruitment procedures of Whitehall, the key architect of Johnson’s election victory has outlined a set of “unusual” qualities he wishes to see in applicants in the blog post which runs to nearly 3,000 words.

A lucky junior applicant will be chosen to be his personal assistant, he added.

The move will be seen as part of the new Conservatives’ plans to shake up central government and break up the civil service’s alleged stranglehold over policy.

In one section, Cummings wrote that he wanted to bring in “super-talented weirdos” with “genuine cognitive diversity” and avoid senior civil service applicants with Oxford and Cambridge English degrees.

“We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole, weirdos from William Gibson novels like that girl hired by Bigend as a brand ‘diviner’ who feels sick at the sight of Tommy Hilfiger or that Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB. Read more

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