Ed Richards, 41, made it to the top of Ofcom in November after a career that included stints working for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Lord Birt before arriving at the communications regulator as its head of policy when it was set up in 2003.

The Ofcom chief executive says that his mentor was John Kay, the principal of London Economics, a business consultancy, where he began his career after graduating from the London School of Economics.

Mr Richards moved from the consultancy to the BBC’s corporate strategy department, eventually becoming its director. That, with his Labour Party membership, acted as a springboard to Downing Street as Mr Blair’s media policy adviser during the time in which the Communications Bill was drawn up. He left Labour when he joined Ofcom and rejects the idea that he is a beneficiary of cronyism, arguing that those with a history of political involvement should not be barred from applying for top jobs. In any event, his elevation to the top job was greeted with relief at the regulator, largely because he was a familiar quantity at the organisation.

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