Either a civil servant at Communities and Local Government has a secret sense of humour or life at Eland House really is like The Thick of It or Yes Minister.
Or maybe both. The leaked memo advising their senior officials how to react to incoming Conservative ministers reads like it must have been written by Armando Iannuuci - and which other department could he have had in mind as a model for the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship?
The memo advises the mandarins to:
- use ‘hot button’ Tory-friendly words in conversation wherever possible - things like ‘families’, ‘radical’, ‘neighbourhoods’ and ‘progressive’
- flatter them with phrases like ‘congratulations! I had so much confidence in you’
- ‘smile’, ‘lean forward’, ‘be interesting’
- engage in ‘supportive listening’ and make eye contact
- talk about value for money and efficiencies without prompting
- expect ‘open, fundamental questions and challenge’ - ‘the Tories are red hot on data’.
The no-nos are to:
- meet ministers in groups of more than three at a time - that may ‘dilute the rapport’
- talk about ‘we’ or ‘us’ when they mean the previous government
- ask Eric Pickles too many questions.
Anyone who is really slow on the uptake is helpfully informed that ‘the minister’s agenda’ is different from ‘our own agenda’ but adds that ‘the department is willing to flex our own agenda’.
Fortunately for the hapless author of the memo, Pickles and Grant Shapps seem to find it as funny as the rest of us. Pickles has tweeted that he hopes he was played by Brian Blessed in the role play sessions it advises them to hold to work out how to build rapport.
But the civil servants will have to come up with other ways to tame the new minister and get them to do what they want because the memo tips them off to smell a rat whenever they are told ‘how Policy X puts the department and the Secretary of State at the centre of Whitehall’.
The memo also reveals just how deep the department is expecting cuts to be - and how badly a sense of humour will be needed.
Among the questions it tells them to expect from Pickles are: ‘Why are we doing this? How soon can we stop doing it? Can we take 40 per cent of the costs out?’
Have your say
You must sign in to make a comment
Readers' comments (1)
Jan Jarvis | 18/05/2010 1:52 pm
Wonderful! But it's all got a bit too clever. Might it not be easier to fall back on the tried-and-tested techniques of good old-fashioned brown nosing, as used with Prescott and others by certain senior civil servants? Easy peazy - laugh uproariously at anything that sounds remotely humorous, show rapt interest in any ministerial utterances, and walk backwards out of the room, bowing as you go.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment