If you can judge a man by the company he keeps, David Cameron is a pinball machine. Look at the random bunch of advisers he hangs – or in one case hung – around with. Just look at them.

First, Andy Coulson, the Essex-boy "man of the people" who rose to become editor of the nation's foremost grieving-relative surveillance unit. At the other end of the spectrum, George Gideon Oliver King Rameses Osborne, 14-year-old novelty chancellor and future baron of Ballentaylor and Ballylemon – a man so posh he probably weeps champagne. And finally, at the opposing end of the spectrum to the other end of the spectrum – thereby hopelessly triangulating the spectrum – we have "blue-sky" policy guru Steve Hilton, who apparently wanders around Downing Street barefoot, "thinking outside the box" like some groovy CEO.

Imagine sitting in a meeting room trying to make sense of that lot. Imagine them collectively giving you policy advice over a tea urn and a platter of sandwiches. Andy darkly gruffing and grumping and breaking off every few minutes to check the Guardian homepage on his iPhone. Gideon wondering how many coins there are in a pound then snorting through his nose as he draws a penis murdering a tramp on his satchel. Steve idly tossing a Hacky Sack around and suggesting the next cabinet meeting should be held in a birthing pool. Talk about conflicting approaches. The cognitive dissonance would grow so loud you'd turn olive and giddy. And then you wouldn't know which one to vomit over first. (Although since you're David Cameron, the correct answer is "yourself".)

Andy and Gideon we're familiar with, of course. Andy is the sinister man in the slow-mo shots on the news, and Gideon is the naughty boy who's broken the economy. But Steve is more of a mystery. I've only ever glimpsed him in still photographs and a bit of news archive of him sitting on a bench somewhere.

Last week, the aura of mystery was punctured somewhat after the Financial Times printed a leaked list of some of his bluer "blue-sky" ideas, such as the abolition of maternity leave and the closure of Job Centres. Ministers were quick to point out none of this was going to become official policy – rather, this was all a bit of amusing crazy talk designed to kick-start internal discussions. You know, an icebreaker – like opening a meeting by suggesting everyone follows you down to the local duck pond to watch you chop the head off a swan with some shears. It gets people talking. The swan's head stays on – the swan was never in danger – but some truly ground-breaking concepts might spin out of the ensuing debate. Only by thinking the unthinkable can we define what's thinkable. The swan has to die in our heads to survive in our hearts. Or something.

Previously, such out-there thought-riffing led Hilton to suggest the use of nascent "cloudbusting" technology to create longer summers – no, really – and more famously, to dream up the "big society". Frustratingly for Hilton's critics, who like to paint him as a sort of misguided guff engine, the big society has been a resounding, concrete success. From the weeniest village to the hugest metropolis, there's a solar-powered big society community hugspace on every corner, staffed by volunteers in unicorn costumes. I can't recall the last time an authentic grassroots movement captured the public imagination on such a grand scale, apart perhaps from T-Mobile's 2009 "Josh's band" advertising campaign, which culminated in a feelgood hit single that stayed at number one for 79 consecutive weeks IN T-MOBILE'S MAD MIND.

Anyway, most of the focus thus far has been on Hilton's laid-back dress sense and the Professor Branestawm wackiness of his ideas, which started out funny but seem less tittersome the more extreme they become. But what sticks in my craw is the sheer stinking, blunted crapness of them.

"Nudge unit". "Big society". "Hug a hoodie". They sound like the titles of nauseating business-psychobabble books: the sort of timewasting Who Moved My Cheese? groovy CEO bullshit routinely found cluttering the shelves of every airport bookshop in the world. As well as being a pallid substitute for actual creativity – a device for making grey business wonks mistake themselves for David Bowie at his experimental peak – these books are the direct suit-and-tie office-dick equivalent of those embarrassing motivational self-help tomes that prey on the insecure, promising to turn their life around before dissolving into a blancmange of "strategies" and "systems" and above all excruciating metaphors.

Be honest. We've all read at least one of these personal empowerment classics. Or at least riffled through it in a bookshop. Any idiot could churn one out. In fact, let's write one now.

We'll call it Break in Your Lifehorse. Chapter 1: imagine your hopes and dreams are a galloping stallion, wild and untamed. Chapter 2: now picture yourself throwing a glowing lasso of light around its neck. Chapter 3: the dream stallion tries to jerk away from you, but if you dig in your heels and whisper at it, it will eventually calm down. Chapter 4: while it grazes, unsuspecting – leap on and saddle up! Chapter 5: ride it through the canyons of doubt and over the horizon of fear. Congratulations! You're achieve-anating! That'll be £10.99 thanks. Don't forget to visit our website to buy the official Lifehorse Grooming Kit containing exclusive workcharts and a guide to customising your saddle. Coming soon: Break in Your Lovehorse (relationship healage for the recently bewildered), and Break in Your Lifepony (successanising strategies for the under-12s.)

There you go. Beam an e-copy of that to Hilton's Kindle, and I guarantee there'll be a Lifehorse in every nudge unit by 2013. Unless he's imagineered his way to having us all diced up and fed to the swans by big society shock troopers as part of some Rainbownomics initiative by then. Which is inevitable. Inevitable.