It is many years since I was anywhere near Whitehall & I am sure things are a lot different now
When I first joined the British Civil Service people would sometimes talk about Richard Crossman who had been the minister in the previous Labour government. He had been capable of being very rude & even used a four letter word sometimes. People then regarded this with a real sense of shock, which seemed a bit oversensitive to me, who had served in more robust administrations overseas
I had occasionally had to attend international meetings of one sort or another. My briefing had always included a warning to ‘watch’ the UK very carefully. They would be perfectly polite & charming to my face, but would have absolutely no hesitation in putting the knife in my back if it suited
But I got used to the Whitehall style & came to appreciate it greatly – it suits me, I do not like rows
I can hold my own if need be however. Working for a boss who is rude is in one sense a liberation, because you can be rude back, you do not have to search for the elegant killer phrase
I have worked for two notably rude men. One, a politician, turned it on as a deliberate act of intimidation. Things were fine so long as I was in favour, but it was not a good place to be & I left as soon as possible
The other was one of those people who just blow up from time to time, the sort who tells you you ought not to get upset because he’s forgotten all about it 5 minutes later. Yeah
Still, he was very good to me in my career & taught me a lot. In one sense it is easy, in that you do not have to take it personally because he does it to everybody. He never managed to keep a secretary for more than 6 months & in the end had to retire a bit early when he reached a level where colleagues decided they just would not put up with him any longer
In my day it would have been almost unheard of for a civil servant to give a journalist a quote about the difficult behaviour of a minister, which of course is not at all the same thing as letting it be known as part of background briefing over lunch or at the club
Which is why I was astonished to see the following in Rachel Sylvesters column in The Times:
He’s incredibly rude. He doesn’t remember names. His e-mails are brusque demands. And his defining characteristic is anger. I’ve seen him kicking furniture
This is Gordon Brown. The Prime Minister
Surely he did not learn to be rude in the Manse?
So where has all this anger & frustration come from? How come he just has not learned that simple politeness gets you an awful long way, builds loyalty etc etc
When I remember that other unprecedented event, the staff of the Treasury lining the stairs to cheer him in in May 1997, (as seen on tv) I really do want to weep
