Mandarin mismatch
WHERE this leaves Sir Terence Burns, the Permanent Secretary, is a matter of conjec- ture in the Reform Club and out. In We Are The Treasury, its candid-camera television programme, he was made to appear as if he were out of the loop — almost as far out as the luckless Jill Rutter, the press secretary whom the new regime first chose to ignore and then to oust. He is an unusual man- darin. He came in from the London Busi- ness School to be chief economic adviser, when he was little older than Mr Balls is now. He was not an established civil servant and had to be formally recruited before he could be promoted. He and the Treasury had a rough time when we were caught in the European exchange rate mechanism. This was not the Treasury's finest hour and, brooding on it afterwards, he thought the Treasury machine needed tuning up. He has put through a scheme of reform designed, in true Treasury style, to get more value out of fewer people. If this interests Mr Brown, there is no sign of it. Perhaps the two men and their styles are ill- matched: the Chancellor brooding and intense, the Permanent Secretary relaxed and humorous. In theory Sir Terence could sit it out to collect his inflation-proofed pension in 2004, but I imagine that by then he will have entered the welcoming lodge- gates of some Oxbridge college.
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