Gordon & Gus

Apparently "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.

As a result, the corridors of power have become the corridors of impotence. Whitehall teems with unhappy cabinet ministers who have not been consulted or even informed about proposals that concern them – little details such as the date of the Budget, troop withdrawals in Iraq or the cancelling of the general election.

Equally significant yet unnoticed by outsiders is the impact on officials who find they are as much out of the loop as ever they were in the days of Tony Blair. With their ministers sidelined, their own expertise – and sometimes months of work on new proposals – is being ignored.....

“It’s nonsense to think of Brown as a principled man who wants a new constitutional settlement,” snorted one Whitehall knight. Over a light Italian lunch he revealed that there are even murmurings against the popular Sir Gus O’Donnell, cabinet secretary and head of the home civil service.

“There’s a lot of anti-Gus feeling about,” he said, tucking into his veal chop. “People are saying he is too close to Brown, that he’s been seduced by the fact that he is inside the big tent. He’s not looking after other cabinet ministers and their departments. He should be telling Brown that he needs more people in the tent and that he should let them make some of the announcements.”

Some senior figures are more sympathetic to Sir Gus. “I wouldn’t have his job for the world,” confided one. “Gus knows about the bunker mentality and he’s probably doing his best to improve things but Brown is ruthless. If Gus tries to distance himself, Brown will cut him loose – he’d be completely finished.”

Which puts Sir Gus between a rock and a hard place. My lunch guest’s parting shot as he sipped the last of his wine was that Sir Gus risked being seen as just part of the ruling clique. “The danger then is that when the clique falls, he’ll go too. Especially,” he added, “when the ruling clique is not very good.”"

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