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Tuesday 7 October 2008

Web Extra: The Tories should fear the dynamic new team of professionals that Brown is assembling

The PM is building an increasingly professional team in No. 10 — and, more importantly, learning to trust it. What is more, the new Brown operation strikes a formidable contrast with Tory head office.

The crunch came at the end of last year, when Mr Brown realised that his plan to run No. 10 using former Treasury officials and Brownite apparatchiks had failed. The evidence was, by then, piled high, with Northern Rock at the top. So he sent Tom Scholar, his chief of staff, back to the Treasury (the official line is that his appointment was transitory) and hired Stephen Carter, an outsider with an extraordinary CV.
He is just 44, but already has a wealth of management experience. In the past ten years alone he has run the advertising firm J. Walter Thompson UK, NTL (now Virgin Media), the regulator Ofcom, and the stellar public relations agency Brunswick. So Mr Carter is, to put it mildly, one of the more capable men wandering around Whitehall.
He works in tandem with Jeremy Heywood, brought back from Morgan Stanley to the new post of permanent secretary at No. 10. Heywood was once principal private secretary to Norman Lamont –who called him one of the most intelligent men he had ever met. 

Even the most paranoid Prime Minister could trust his abilities — which Mr Brown is doing. The PM no longer takes part in the No. 10 early morning conference call — where Whitehall’s commanders are given their marching orders. Instead, he has ceded the floor to Mr Carter who ensures everything is in order then reports back
If an issue arose with another department, Mr Brown’s instinct was to engage in some light telephone terrorism by ringing the Cabinet member involved. Now, say those inside No10, he will leave it to Carter and Heywood to talk to their counterparts and resolve the issue. In the early days, Brown was once notorious for refusing to release any document or plan he had not signed off – making No 10 a bottleneck. Now, he is content to hear Carter or Heywood has given the all clear.

The tone of conversations inside No10 has already changed. Those who overhear Mr Carter and Mr Heywood in their meetings with Mr Brown say that phrases like ‘It’s OK, we’ll fix it’ or “it’s all right, we’ll deal with it” are common. The Prime Minister’s supporters say he’s always devolved to people he trusted – it’s just that he could count the people he trusted on two hands. Now, in Carter and Heywood, he has come the closest to replacing Ed Balls and Ed Miliband – whom he lost to the Commons in 2005 and now serve in his Cabinet. “Gordon is normally very, very slow to trust new people,” one Brownite tells me. “But he trusts Carter.” It may sound incredible, but Gordon is slowly letting go.

More articles from: Fraser Nelson | this section

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