Is this the most dangerous man in government?

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Steve Hilton – David Cameron’s closest adviser (in charge of progressive nonsense), and the man behind the “Big Society” – advocated abolishing maternity rights, amongst a raft of bizarre suggestions unveiled by the Financial Times this morning. The FT reports:

“perhaps his most ambitious unfulfilled plan was to scrap maternity rights. “Steve thinks that they are the biggest obstacle to women finding work, because companies know they are required by law to offer maternity leave,” said one Whitehall insider.”

Other schemes dreamt up by Hilton include abolishing all consumer rights regulations for 9 months (to “see what happens”), replacing press officers with a single blogger in each department, abolishing job centres and buying cloudbursting technology to provide Britain with more sunshine.

Thankfully it seems that most of Hilton’s plans are ignored by the Prime Minister, but some of these ideas go beyond “thinking the unthinkable” and into the downright dangerous.

Update: Another example of Hilton’s madcap thinking came when he suggested that advertisers would provide millions of pounds of advertising for free.