My time in Downing Street: humbling, good for the soul, but painful | Polly Mackenzie

I arrived at Downing Street half an hour before Nick Clegg – two colleagues and I the only familiar faces among a sea of strangers waiting to welcome him behind the famous black door.

For me and my Liberal Democrat colleagues it was particularly disorienting because, let’s face it, nobody joins the Lib Dems with the expectation they’ll end up in government.

An actual civil service team to support this constitutional anomaly of a deputy prime minister took years to get up to strength.

I did get a plum office myself, near the cabinet room and with a view of the garden, because I signed up to share with Cameron’s infamous adviser Steve Hilton.

I thought I knew everything about our policies, but suddenly, the scale of what I didn’t know was overwhelming The biggest challenge moving into government was the volume of work.

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