The relevance of boring questions of governance

Damian McBride, Five Years On....The day GB became PM: For me, what we lost that day was something more fundamental, as apparent during the first months of the ‘Brown Bounce’ as in the doldrums that followed. We lost the Treasury. By which I mean that, in the Treasury, Gordon had officials in every key position who knew how he worked and what he wanted; who knew when to refer issues to him and when to take decisions themselves. These were relationships built up over 10 years of long days and late nights working on Budgets, Spending Reviews, Mansion House speeches and Euro papers. Gordon knew them, and trusted them.