Mai or mad ors
I FIRST met the Chancellor's new lieute- nant because of a change of recruiting Policy at the Standard Chartered Bank. In the heyday of colonial banking, the Char- tered and the Standard used to leave out their bowls of porridge at the corner of Sauchiehall Street, and employ the hungry lads who got there first. This produced a distinctive, craggy type of banker known as the Irrawaddy Scot. A challenge to the Scots' rule brought in such bright and uncraggy recruits as John Major. Promo- tion took him through the bank's press office, and we had cheerful times together. Now he pops up in the Cabinet, as Chief Secretary — straight into the slog of taking the Finance Bill through Parliament, while the other bane of a Chief Secretary's life bubbles towards its climax in September. This is the Pesc — Whitehallese for the annual bargaining match on public spend- ing. It was a match which, last year, the Treasury lost. Only an unprecedented dis- play of tax-gathering enabled the Chancel- lor, in his budget, to hand some of the tax back. This year's Pesc will be, for the Treasury, another exercise in recovering control after an election — but an election which has left the caring (or, as the Treasury and I would say, spending) de- partments in a strong political position. That tough Treasury man Sir Leo Pliatsky said that controlling public spending was like keeping hippopotami away from a waterhole: 'You drive them off, and drive them off, and still in the end back they come.' Mr Major will have to practise being craggy.
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