Tim Leunig is the brains behind some of the biggest education policies of the past decade. He also came up with the furlough scheme, which helped to stop thousands of businesses collapsing during Covid.
We meet at Westminster Abbey, where Leunig arrives in a high-vis vest (although he didn’t cycle here). It fits his reputation as the archetypal “weirdo and misfit” that Dominic Cummings, the government’s former chief adviser, said Westminster needed more of.
The setting enables Leunig to indulge his love of history and politics as we tour memorials to the people who created ripples on the tide of British history, before turning to the ripples of Leunig’s own making.
In 12 years as a civil servant, Leunig advised Number 10, the Treasury and Department for Education, among others. He is a close ally of Michael Gove, Nick Gibb and Cummings. Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is an “old friend” and neighbour.
