Execution only
THEY and their patron have all had to learn. In opposition, they had to compete to be noticed, and developed a line of their own in attention-seeking behaviour, or showing off. This was not likely to play so well in government, and least of all in the financial markets. The Chancellor, finding himself at the wheel of the Treasury's splendid machine, has had trouble in adapt- ing to it or adapting it to him. He deals with it, so the mandarins say, as if it were an exe- cution-only stockbroker — there to put the client's order through but not to offer advice. The Treasury thinks of itself as a full-service broker and suspects that this client has made a false economy. That hap- pened with the botched launch of the Indi- vidual Savings Accounts. The Treasury never warned us, so its ministers were heard to grumble afterwards. They had only to ask. Good advice can, after all, be good value.
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