The Downing Street Chief of Staff is the most senior political appointee in the Office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, acting as a senior aide to the Prime Minister and a powerful, non-ministerial position within the British Government. The role of Chief of Staff when created had executive authority and at the time was referred to as "almost certainly the most powerful unelected official in the country", and possibly "the third most powerful altogether" after the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Since 2007 the role does not legally have executive authority, though the post holder remains a very senior adviser to the Prime Minister. The current Downing Street Chief of Staff is Edward Llewellyn.
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“My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)
“The democratic youth ... lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practising gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“The street is full of humiliations to the proud.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“... all my letters are read. I like that. I usually put something in there that I would like the staff to see. If some of the staff are lazy and choose not to read the mail, I usually write on the envelope “Legal Mail.” This way it will surely be read. It’s important that we educate everybody as we go along.”
—Jean Gump, U.S. pacifist. As quoted in The Great Divide, book 2, section 10, by Studs Terkel (1988)