CITY AND SUBURBAN
Leaking, planting, manuring, Gordon Brown's gardeners end up by getting their feet wet
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Now that the dirty water is lapping at the Treasury's doorstep, the water-garden- ers are in trouble, and about time too. It is the best part of a year since Gordon Brown set off around the world to preach the virtues of transparency, and even then it seemed incongruous. I said at the time that his regime at the Treasury had been marked by a water-gardener's approach to disclosure — selective leaking and planting with a liberal top-dressing of manure: `Transparency would certainly be welcome.' Not a chance. His gardening squad had been with -him in opposition, they swarmed around him in government, and the very next month they were starring in a film too aptly called We Are the Treasury. They so evidently believed that they were, and that the Permanent Secretary therefore wasn't, let alone the press secretary. (Neither of these two relished this display of arrogance and both have now left the public service.) As for the leaking and planting, all it need- ed was suitable soil, and of course the top- dressing. There were and are particular dangers in their approach to the Treasury's business, and six months ago I was pointing this out: 'If the Treasury had been a compa- ny, they would have been hauled up to the top of the Stock Exchange tower by now, to be called, stammering, to account for their handling of price-sensitive information.' Sure enough, we now have a lobbyist claim- ing to have sold this information to an investment bank which could, he said, have made a fortune from it. Perhaps he was just boasting. Perhaps the investment bank guessed right, as can happen in markets. Perhaps the water will recede from the doorstep and leave the gardeners with nothing worse than a fright. Even that would be salutary.
Previous page
