Frank Field interview: Labour needs to do something dramatic to win back its lost working class voters

There’s one government adviser who still feels Steve Hilton’s absence very keenly indeed. ‘He was always thinking ahead, how do we set the debate rather than endlessly react to it, that was why he was such a delight to work for. All the time he was racing ahead. It was difficult to keep up with him. I just thought he was brilliant, he was just wonderful.’ But it’s not a Tory MP or spinner who is missing the Prime Minister’s ‘blue-sky’ guru: this adviser is Labour MP Frank Field, appointed by the government when it formed to work with David Cameron on how to tackle poverty. He suspects that it was Hilton’s departure that led to the review that he painstakingly compiled gathering dust on a Number 10 shelf, allegedly unread.

‘I think Stevie Wonder appointed me, and I don’t think, I think that had he still been there, he would have then said to the Prime Minister, this is the next stage.