A common career move for MPs after losing their seats is to turn to consultancy. Their expertise in government and parliamentary procedures, so the spiel goes, makes their minds valuable to tap for companies eager for an insight into thinking at the top (and, they don’t say quite so loudly, their parliamentary passes-for-life give them ready access to what remains of their former colleagues).
A lot of Conservative MPs found themselves without a job after last year’s general election. Last October we reported how self-styled ‘Brexit hardman’ Steve Baker had, alongside Paul Dolan – an academic with a penchant for dressing as a member of a 1990s techno outfit – launched ‘The Provocation People’, a body which “can help you transform your decision-making by systematically dismantling groupthink”. Baker and Dolan are listed on the site as its “Chief Provocation Officers”.
Now one of Baker’s fellow hardline Brexiteers has followed suit. Chris Heaton-Harris was a short-lived chief whip under Boris Johnson and Northern Ireland secretary under both the Liz Truss interregnum and Rishi Sunak.
New European readers may remember how, in 2017 Heaton-Harris, a then lowly Tory whip, wrote to university vice-chancellors across the UK asking for the names of any professors involved in teaching European affairs “with particular reference to Brexit”. In his letter, he asked for “a copy of the syllabus” and any online lectures on Brexit. After being accused of “McCarthyite” tactics by academics who said it was an assault on free speech Heaton-Harris was defended by colleagues who said it was, in fact, research for a book he was writing (eight years on, the work has yet to see the light of day).
Now there’s even less time for wordsmithery as Heaton-Harris has launched Oak Communications, a consultancy offering “straightforward insight in a changing world”. It is, it says, “dedicated to providing comprehensive insight to companies looking to navigate and surf the oncoming waves of change breaking over the UK and EU economic and political landscapes”.
Heaton-Harris’s partner in this exciting new endeavour is Gawain Towler, the long-time Nigel Farage spinner given the heave-ho by Reform last September as Farage sought to professionalise the party’s communications. Towler is, though, still listed as the media contact on the website of the long-dormant Museum of Brexit, a planned tourist attraction in hibernation so long one of the trustees highlighted on its homepage is Nigel Lawson, who died almost exactly two years ago.
Don’t all rush at once for the insights of this dynamic duo!
