Priti Patel and my defence of ‘bossy’ politicians as Home Office row deepens – Bernard Ingham

Yes, indeed, I did once tell her she was seen as bossy.

But, no, she didn’t handbag me. She listened – not a virtue of which she was often accused. The cartoon reflected her public image; not reality.

The Thatcher Foundation, in Cambridge, holds lots of my minutes analysing the political/media situation as her press secretary and there is evidence that one at least hurt.

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Peter Morrison, her Parliamentary Private Secretary, told me I had upset her. He said he had told her it was only because I loved her. Steady on, Peter, I said.

All these happy memories came floating back at the weekend for two reasons.

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First, the Thatcher Foundation released more documents containing some of my frank minutes to her on the Government’s media and political situation.

In October 1990 – a month before she was deposed – I wrote: “The plain truth is that the Government and your party need to be made to snap out of it: to recover their purpose; and to jump to it. It’s later than they think.” I survived.

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The second reason is reports that Home Secretary Priti Patel has fallen out with her Permanent Secretary, the official head of the Home Office, and No 10 wants to get rid of two more at the Treasury and Foreign Office for frustrating the Government.

Patel is accused of belittling officials and creating an atmosphere of fear. According to some, the Department for International Development was not a very happy place either when she was its Secretary of State in 2016-17.

She comes across as strong-willed with a hard centre.

But there are always two sides to this and she is not short of political supporters.

My guess is that she is a demanding workaholic, impatient to tackle problems, who has come up against an experienced official who believes in orderly and legal process and is worried about the effects of her drive on an over-burdened staff.

So what’s new?

It would be amazing if all was peace and amity in a government.

The problem is how to fashion creative, rather than destructive, tension inherent at the centre of any administration.

This is where I want to put in a good word for the late Tony Benn, the only Minister who sacked me.

Harold Wilson moved him from Industry to Energy in a straight swap with Eric Varley in the 1970s because, among other things, his worker cooperatives were proving expensive.

He was so hurt that for weeks he incarcerated himself with his lefty advisers.

When he emerged, he conceived the idea of a party political broadcast on North Sea oil, which the Government was effectively nationalising, without Opposition right of reply.

I told him it wasn’t on – and No 10 and the BBC immediately agreed when they saw his copy.

I conveyed their verdict to him, perhaps giving more of a hint of “I told you so” than I should have done.

That night he wrote both me and his Principal Private Secretary, who had agreed with me, out of a visit to the United States – effectively firing us.

I consulted John Smith, who was to become Labour leader, and he was dismissive.

“Go and have a row with him” he said. “Wedgie doesn’t like rows”.

I saw Benn privately and told him I had a vested interest in his success because cleaning up messes was very wearing. Instantly, he said he had treated me abominably and it would not occur again. It didn’t.

While all this was going on, Benn and his Permanent Secretary, Sir Jack Rampton, kept their distance because they fundamentally disagreed about nuclear energy policy.

Later, Benn sacked Sir Walter Marshall, his chief scientific adviser, who was gung-ho for nuclear.

But then Mrs Thatcher fired Marshall as chairman of the CEGB over electricity privatisation. Walter was not a political animal.

Which brings me to the moral of my tale. Good government is about managing the tensions infesting Whitehall and Westminster.

I suspect that Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s policy wonk, is exacerbating problems with his urge to drive and control everything. You may not be able to make an omelette without breaking eggs.

But this Government has made a bad, messy start and sorely needs a sense of proportion, less leaking, more cohesion, more honour – and a sense of humour.