Matt Cavanagh (born 1971) is a British political adviser and author.[1][2] He was a special adviser in the UK Labour government (2003–10).[1] He worked for Home Secretary David Blunkett;[3] for Chancellor Gordon Brown;[4] for Defence Secretary Des Browne;[5] and for Gordon Brown again as Prime Minister from June 2007 to May 2010.[1][6] Subsequently, he was an associate director at theInstitute for Public Policy Research, working on UK immigration policy.[7] He now works in the private sector as Director of Government Relations forPrudential plc.[8]
Matthew Cavanagh was born in 1971.[9] He was educated atBedford Modern School[10] andBalliol College, Oxford, where he read PPE, and then took a BPhil and DPhil in Philosophy.[1] From 1996 to 2000 he was lecturer in Philosophy atSt Catherine's College, Oxford.[1] From 2000 to 2003 he was a strategy consultant for theBoston Consulting Group.[1]
Cavanagh is the author ofAgainst Equality of Opportunity a controversial work of 2002 that criticises conventional understandings of the doctrine of equality of opportunity.[11] It gained positive reviews across the political spectrum, including in theTimes Educational Supplement[12] and inThe Spectator.[13] Other reviews were mixed, including Jeremy Waldron in theLondon Review of Books[14] and in the Guardian.[11]
Two years later in 2004, with Cavanagh now working as a special adviser, the Guardian returned to the book with a front-page story arguing that his views on race and equal opportunity made him unfit to work in government.[15] This led to widespread calls for Cavanagh to be sacked, with questions tabled in Parliament, and the affair rumbled on for a few days.The Guardian letters page carried a balance of letters for and against Cavanagh.[16]
In 2009 he was briefly in the news again, when he was accused of putting pressure on NHS statisticians to release statistics on knife crime prematurely.[17] The UK Statistics Watchdog reprimanded Downing Street, and again there were calls for his sacking, including from the Public Administration Committee.[18]
Cavanagh has written on Afghanistan and other subjects for Prospect[19] andThe Spectator[20] magazines. He is a regular contributor to a number of blogs including theNew Statesman,[21]The Spectator,[22] and Labour Uncut.[23]
He was the British national champion atRugby fives in 2004 and 2006, and has since been a veteran winner.[24][25]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
