Sir John Major spies a menace in Whitehall's midst Sir John distinguishes between Spads who chatter to the media and those with policy expertise who bring in an external perspective. Yet he clearly feels the chatterers are in the ascendant. Lord O'Donnell says that in Sir John's time Spads and impartial civil servants used to work well together in the No 10 policy unit. When he asks if such an arrangement is still working well today, Sir John says no. He makes no criticism of the present Government, which has had its own problems with Spads, notably in the case of Adam Smith, Spad to Jeremy Hunt, the then culture secretary, and Adam Werritty, a Spad in all but name to the former defence secretary, Liam Fox. It is also true that a number of the current Tory ministers, most notably David Cameron and George Osborne, rose to the top via the Spad route without always gaining that much experience of that "real world" in between. It is here that Sir John's criticisms are most relevant. In the years since he left Downing Street, the 24/7 media has become ever more dominant. Realistically, no ministers are going to give up their media Spads. Also, ministers who come to power after years in Opposition want to reward those who have served them with Spad posts. Understandable, perhaps, but it is highly undesirable to have people at the heart of government who, as Sir John puts it, have had little experience outside the "hothouse of Whitehall and Westminster." Insiders even say it is now part of the culture for officials to put new ideas first to Spads, so limiting the number of options eventually going to ministers. One answer would be for the Commons to vet the appointment of all would-be Spads and to insist on them having at least a few years" experience of what Sir John calls real life. The most senior Spads are already well paid - by the taxpayer - so it shouldn't put good people off applying. Although Spads are not the same as senior officials, they are political appointees, as are all top officials in America, which is what some would want to see here. Yet the US example is not a happy one. In 2008, President Obama's newly appointed treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, was left to cope with the international financial crisis with almost no support. Because it takes months for a new administration to appoint all the staff needed. Lord O'Donnell tells me: "Tim Geithner was having to manage global meltdown virtually alone. If it hadn't been for Gordon Brown calling the G20, there would have been a much greater danger of the world going down a protectionist route. The same point was made this week by Jonathan Coleman, New Zealand's public services minister, who was in London. He too said the US system led to a lack of institutional memory and experience that could be a recipe for chaos. Dr Coleman certainly believed it had put extra pressure on President Obama in dealing with the financial crisis when he came to power. Dr Coleman said that New Zealand politicians didn't want "permanent civil servants so permanent you could never get rid of them." Yet, like Whitehall traditionalists, he stressed the need for a Civil Service that had institutional knowledge - and that meant officials staying in post for some years and not changing every time there was a new minister. New Zealand, of course, has a population of only some four million. As Dr Coleman said to me, if all the top civil servants moved out every time there was a new government, there would soon be none left.