Brown brings in the barbed wire
Sue Cameron has an excellent piece in the FT on how the civil service feels about Gordon Brown:
Oh dear! No one in Whitehall expected Gordon Brown to revert to type so quickly. He has been in Number 10 less than six months but, to the horror of civil servants, he has already hunkered down and cut most communication with the rest of government. Insiders say that no papers, no ideas and no decisions are getting through the barbed wire – only announcements from the leader that have been discussed with no one outside Mr Brown’s inner circle.
Read the rest. It's worth it.
Plus ca change. Was it not in the Times of 20 March 2007* that we read "Brown is savaged by former civil servant for ‘Stalinist’ tactics"? Yes, it was. Followed on 21st by Peter Brookes's brilliant cartoon in the Times and by Steve Bell's 22 March 'Back from the dead' in the Guardian.
Admiral Lord West was lucky yesterday. All he had to do was stand on his head. When Kondratiev told Stalin there was no way one of his five-year plans was going to work, Stalin's solution to this economic problem was to send Kondratiev to the camps.
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* http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1540993.ece
Posted by: David Moss | 15 Nov 2007 11:17:13