Bernard Ingham: Arrogant Labour are like Tiger Woods, minus the libido

It is, of course, quite conceivable that I worked for some unusually restrained – or repressed – politicians, some of whom harbour to this day the regret that they did not clobber me with their red box. But who would believe Barbara Castle or Margaret Thatcher bottled up things?

Alternatively, they may have thought I was not worth the effort, but that won't wash either since they persistently sought my advice.

The men – Robert Carr, Maurice Macmillan, Lord Carrington, Eric Varley and Tony Benn – were perfect gents.

It is true that Wedgie once sacked me (along with his private secretary) for telling him he was wrong in supposing he could make a Ministerial broadcast on North Sea oil without right of Opposition reply – after I had established the position with first No 10 and then the BBC.

The late John Smith, who became leader of the Labour Party, advised me to have a row with him. "Wedgie doesn't like rows," he said.

So, in a private meeting, I explained why I thought he should not get rid of me. He collapsed at the first whiff of grapeshot and said: "I have treated you abominably. It won't happen again."

By now you will think that, on the Gordon Brown Richter Scale, I led a sheltered life in government. Not entirely. I once felt obliged to have it out with Lord Balogh, a junior Minister under Eric Varley, for misleading The Times, through his tame PR man, about untold oil and gas riches under the Western Approaches that have yet to be discovered.

He ordered me out of his room, making it clear he wanted rid of me. In departing, I managed to so unhinge his door that they had to call in a joiner.

From this you may well conclude it is perhaps fortunate that I never came across our present Prime Minister.

But let's be realistic. You cannot work alongside Ministers in the stressful business of government without having your moments with them. Man – and, not least, woman – is a volatile animal. The relationship – especially between minister and press secretary – is often a test of wills. It is not for sensitive plants.

Ministers sometimes want to do the daftest things – like one Tory who tried to insist I write a letter of correction to the Communist Morning Star. I pointed out that it was only seriously read in the Kremlin and that that lot were impervious to facts.

Yet, setting aside my own experience, I can honestly say that in all my time in the Civil Service, I never heard gossip of violent or nasty behaviour by Ministers towards staff.

Dick Crossman, one of Labour's towering intellects, was certainly known, like Gordon Brown, as a bully, but his reputation came without violent embellishment.

So, is Gordon Brown a one-off job? Probably. Certainly, I am inclined to believe Andrew Rawnsley's account of life in No 10 with the "Prime Monster", as the Sun described him. Rawnsley is no cheap sensationalist and his claims look to be well sourced.

In any case, 13 years have taught us not to believe a word this Government says when it is on the defensive and reduced to employing the oleaginous Lord Mandelson to finesse trouble away. Somebody should tell them he is counter-productive.

But there is a much more serious point about Britain's current

governance than a PM with a volcanic temper. It is not just Brown in New Labour 1997-2010 who has demonstrated he does not know how to behave in government.

Tony Blair, and some would say especially his wife, Cherie, Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, and Brown's media men, Charlie Whelan and, latterly, Damian McBride, have all provided master classes in how not to conduct themselves. Their common inexperience of government when they started is no excuse.

I believe Brown's unacceptable behaviour is only one symptom, stemming from his psychological flaws, of an arrogant and amoral incompetence brought by his Labour generation to the running of a once great nation. For some reason, they believed an election winner takes all and is excused almost anything.

They remind me of Tiger Woods, without the libido.