No prime minister, with the debatable exception of Anthony Eden, has been held in such low private esteem by senior civil servants as Tony Blair. Cabinet secretaries Robin Butler and Richard Wilson have delivered withering public verdicts on the slipshod way government now conducts its business. So have senior officials like Michael Quinlan and former ambassadors like Rodric Braithwaite.
Meanwhile Downing Street has fostered a novel species of accommodating officials. The DTI permanent secretary Robin Young, rather too happy to engage in Blairite political intrigue, is one. Jeremy Heywood, the Downing Street private secretary who adapted so readily to Tony Blair’s sofa government, is another. Alex Allan, the civil servant responsible for a patronage system which generated this month’s shameful list of working peers (also approved by Lord Stevenson of Coddenham), is the most recent addition. It has been said for some time, by people in a reasonable position to know, that the going rate for a peerage under New Labour is about £250,000.
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