He made the announcement in a 3,000 word blog post, that criticised the usual recruitment of Oxbridge civil servants for the role.

“We need some true wild cards,” he wrote, “artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole…”

He added, “If you want to figure out what characters around Putin might do, or how international criminal gangs might exploit holes in our border security, you don’t want more Oxbridge English graduates who chat about Lacan at dinner parties with TV producers and spread fake news about fake news.”

Bizarre application process

Cummings wrote that anyone interested for the position of his assistant should send a single page application to an unsecured - and unofficial - Gmail account.

Potential applicants were told to send an email with the subject heading “Job” to [email protected], outlining why they would suit the role.

The job advertisement is extremely unorthodox, with important civil service jobs usually requiring several rounds of interviews and aptitude tests, as well as vetting procedures.

The ideal candidate

Cummings said he did not want to hire “private school bluffers”, instead saying the government needs the help of “an unusual set of people with different skills and backgrounds.”

He said Downing Street currently needed:

Data scientists Software developers Economists Policy experts Project managers Communication experts Junior researchers A personal assistant to Cummings himself

He warned that anyone applying to be his assistant would need to make significant sacrifices.

“You will not have weekday date nights, you will sacrifice many weekends — frankly it will be hard having a boy/girlfriend at all.

“It will be exhausting but interesting and if you cut it you will be involved in things at the age of 21 that most people never see.”

Boris Johnson’s chief advisor calls for ‘weirdos and misfits’ to come work at No 10 - with this bizarre application process