Rohan Silva

Rohan Silva is Senior Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister David Cameron.

Background

Born in Wakefield, the 29 year old studied law at Manchester and worked as an intern for Labour MP Nigel Griffiths. Journalist Josh Neicho reports that "Reading Popper and Isaiah Berlin for his Masters at LSE made him suspicious of Left-wing utopianism". "A natural supporter of the coalition who some see as a political chameleon", he is purportedly also "a protégé" of spindoctor Steve Hilton.

Silva was ranked 39th (a place held jointly with Matthew Hancock and Rupert Harrison) in a list of the 'Top 100 most influential Right-wingers' by The Telegraph in October 2009. At this point, Silva, Hancock and Harrison were advisers to then Shadow Chancellor George Osborne.

In an article examining the Conservatives' "trick" of "appearing progressive and yet Thatcherite", New Statesman journalist Steve Richards mentions Silva as a case in point:

[Silva] briefly worked for a Labour MP and switched sides on the assumption that the current Tory leadership was serious about its proclaimed progressive objectives... [He has] shown interest in the work of Phillip Blond, the so-called Red Tory who is about to launch his own think tank.

In August 2010, Silva was described in The Economist as "perhaps the most ardent centrifugalist of the policy advisers".

Silva was also Senior Policy Adviser for the 2010 General Election. Prior to this, he was a Policy Analyst at HM Treasury. He sits on the advisory panel of the Progressive Conservatism project at the think tank Demos.

Silva is a trustee of the Battersea Arts Centre and the Citizenship Foundation.