"Gutter journalism" was the abuse which spat from the mouth of John Prescott, a man whose infidelities include having sex with a junior civil servant in a hotel room while his long-suffering and oblivious wife, Pauline, waited downstairs to have dinner with the treacherous and hypocritical toad. Her recent memoir describes how he slunk back to their home in Hull to confess to his adultery before it became public. His security staff preceded him into the house to dump a bag of his dirty smalls for Pauline to wash.I know which of us is better acquainted with the gutter.
After the rumble with Prescott on Newsnight, I faced Roy Hattersley, a more sophisticated old bruiser who had also been brought to the studio to have a pop. Afterwards, Roy told me that he was going to give a bad review to The End of the Party. Roy and I have known each other for years and have generally got on very well. Indeed, he is one of the many Labour figures whom I interviewed for the book. I have always been an admirer of Roy's literary style, not least because he gave a highly flattering notice to my earlier work about New Labour, Servants of the People. Yet I have clearly underestimated him. I had not realised that Roy possesses such advanced critical faculties that he is able to decide that he will give a bad review to a book before he has actually read it.
Ouch.
Sometimes the discussions bordered on the absurd, such as when we managed to clinch a deal with the Lib Dems by promising that Menzies (Ming) Campbell would get a taxpayer-funded car and driver if the reforms went through. (p. 115)
Listen to the tape recording HERE.Gordon Brown was accused of lying about his bullying behaviour last night after one of his closest aides revealed in a sensational tape-recording how the Prime Minister shoved him on the stairs inside No10.
In the tape, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, the official describes how he exclaimed ‘Bloody hell!’ and was left ‘shocked and upset’ when Mr Brown pushed him aside with a raised arm.
The adviser says Mr Brown’s staff have made excuses for his bullying behaviour for years. And, damagingly, he questions whether they had been right to do so, arguing a ‘core part’ of being Prime Minister is to treat people properly.
The comments were made by Mr Brown’s senior foreign policy adviser, Dr Stewart Wood, one of the most powerful officials in Whitehall. They directly contradict Mr Brown’s repeated denials that he bullied staff, following claims in a new book by political journalist Andrew Rawnsley.
Today, The Mail on Sunday produces explosive evidence of Mr Brown’s bullying. It comes in the form of a tape-recording of Dr Wood, a Labour-supporting Oxford don and friend of Mr Brown, who has been on the receiving end of the Prime Minister’s bullying.
In the taped conversation with pro-Labour journalist Suzie Mackenzie, Dr Wood denies he was actually hit in the clash on the Downing Street stairs. Mr Brown did ‘not quite’ throw a punch at him, he says.
But he confirms the Prime Minister pushed him and shouted ‘Get outta my way’ at him. He said the incident left him shocked.
The interview took place on January 14 over lunch in Westminster’s Cinnamon Club, a £50-a-head Indian restaurant a short walk from Downing Street that is popular with politicians. Ms Mackenzie asked Dr Wood: ‘Did Gordon ever punch you?’
Stewart Wood: ‘That’s interesting.’
SM: ‘Someone told me that he hit you once and you were very cross.’SW: ‘Did they tell you I ran in to the toilet crying? I didn’t by the way. I did say, “Bloody hell.” I was pretty shocked. I was standing at the top of the stairs at No10. There was a reception for EU ambassadors and I was waiting . . . to say these are the three people you need to speak to.
‘He was in a really bad mood. He walked up the stairs. And I leant forward and he went, “Outta my way!” And did that [Dr Wood makes a sweeping gesture with his arm] “Get outta my way!” Then he walked off.’
SM: ‘You were shocked?’
SW: ‘Yeah, yeah definitely. He’s never punched me. He did push me aside . . . I was slightly shocked. I stood there and went something like, “Christ Almighty!” . . . Gordon can be rude in a kind of routine way.’
Dr Wood, who is in his 40s, adds that Mr Brown is ‘routinely rude’. Moreover, Dr Wood suggests Mr Brown’s staff have put up with his tantrums for too long and that as Prime Minister, he has a duty to behave better.
‘I used to think, “Oh, that’s just Gordon,”’ said Dr Wood. ‘As a team we too often say, “That’s just Gordon.” We all try and apologise for it. But it is important. It has become more important since he’s become Prime Minister because how you deal, as an individual, with human beings is actually a core part of the job.’
The candid conversation came as part of Ms Mackenzie’s research for an authorised biography of the Prime Minister. Her book, Gordon Brown: A Portrait Of A Man is to be serialised in The Mail on Sunday later this year.
"When Gordon Brown took over, this, our great country, was the 4th largest economy in the world. Now it is falling behind and forecast within 5 years to be the 11th, behind not just growing giants like China, but behind our neighbours France and Italy. We were ranked 7th in the world for the competitiveness of our economy. Now we are 13th. We were 4th in the world for our tax and regulation. Now we are 84th and 86th. We are the last G20 country to emerge from recession. We are borrowing almost as much of our income as Greece, but the Greeks have more plans than Gordon Brown, like everyone else in the world, to do something about it. We are telling the British people the truth: we cannot go on like this. We say to them now: it is time, it is time to make the break. We cannot go on just borrowing money from China so that we can buy their goods and then borrow some more.
Gordon Brown is like a credit card company who will always send you another letter saying it would be so easy when in debt to borrow even more. Every family, every small business, everyone except this Government knows it is the road to ruin.
Last week Gordon Brown said the election should not be a verdict on the Government's past record. Let me tell him this: we will ensure that a country that wants to look to the future is fully aware of his record. He may not want to discuss his pension destroying, gold selling, golden rule-breaking, national debt-doubling, money wasting, tax raising, colleague rubbishing, pledge betraying, election bottling record but, oh boy, we do.
He says voters should give him a second chance. Look here Gordon, you've had 13 years now. You've had your second chance and your third. No one in Britain can afford to give you a fourth chance: no one in this country can afford another 5 years of Gordon Brown. So it is time for change. And if we do not take this opportunity, grasp this hour, to set a new direction for Britain, then I tell you in all frankness that it will be too late. It will be too late in 5 years' time to say we should have got rid of them, too late to reverse the decline: the debt will be too big, the bureaucracy too bloated, the small businesses too stifled, the slope Britain is sliding down will be too steep.
So to every voter listening to us now we say solemnly, if not now it will be too late. It is time, time to say we can rescue our country, time to refuse to get poorer and more indebted, time to say Britain is not doomed to decline, time to let the Labour party fight its squabbles out of power where it can do no harm, time to invite the forces of hell to get the hell out of Downing Street."
In an age of colourless bureaucrats, Nigel Farage is a politician you are unable to ignore. Farage, who recently resigned as leader of UKIP, divides the political establishment, causing controversy and admiration in equal measure. What cannot be denied is the effect he has had on British politics. A founder member of UKIP, he was elected to the European Parliament in 1999, and re-elected twice. Becoming party leader in 2006, much of the electoral success of UKIP – the party David Cameron famously described as “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists” - can be put down to Mr Farage’s charismatic leadership, his robust appearances on TV and radio, and his tendency towards the limelight. Farage describes growing up in London, where, after a boisterous youth at Dulwich College, he become a City trader at the height of Thatcher’s yuppie paradise, becoming involved in politics only after John Major’s government signed the Maastricht treaty in 1992. He claims Enoch Powell as a hero and is an avowed fan of lapdancing.
However, Farage’s life and career has not been as smooth as his charming exterior, from a News of the World Sex Scandal in 2006 to the reporting by the Guardian in May 2009 that over ten years as a member of the European Parliament he received and spent nearly £2 million of taxpayers’ money in expenses and allowances, on top of his £64,000 a year salary. Fighting Bull also describes his near death in a car accident at twenty one, and his later diagnosis of testicular cancer.
Ironically, when the expenses scandal hit in UK politics, UKIP found itself ideally placed to take advantage. In September Farage announced he would stand against John Bercow, the newly elected Speaker of the House of Commons, in his Buckingham constituency in the next election, despite a convention that the speaker is not challenged for re-election - in protest at Westminster’s handling of the MPs’ expenses scandal. Fighting Bull is a candid, colourful life story by a fascinating and controversial character.
Former Tory MP George Walden was one of Britain's worst ever High Education Ministers. Since leaving Parliament he has earned a living writing pseudo-intellectual drivel about politics and culture. It's usually unreadable. I attended a discussion evening with him and his wife a couple of years ago, organised by Living Marxism. He was insufferable and spent the whole evening putting down his wife. In the Independent on Sunday diary there is a piece on his book The New Elites in which he slags off David Cameron for "being a posh man pretending to be common". Utter rubbish. But even if it were true, it's better than a pub bore pretending to be an intellectual.
click on image to enlarge"I was waiting with a crowd of guests at the Pillars of Hercules pub in Soho for the start of a party being thrown by Kevin Maguire, the Mirror's amiable political editor, to celebrate his wife's launch of a chick-lit novel. Political journalists and rom-com novelists are not the most promising mixture for a convivial evening, but we were all rubbing along until for no reason Charlie Whelan, Brown's point man in the unions, turned to the journalists and started laying into the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As he was speaking in a public place and did not ask to go off the record, the etiquette of journalism allows me to say that I was astonished. Darling had been a loyal friend of Brown's, but that did not stop Whelan from denigrating him."
So, my old mate Peter Kilfoyle has announced that he is the 143rd MP to make an exit from the House of Commons at the next election. He has been MP for Liverpool Walton since 1991 and is perhaps most famous as the scourge of Militant on Merseyside.
Click on the image to enlargeJEFF RANDALL:
Now that you have faced him down and in some respects called his bluff, has the Prime Minister stopped bullying you?
ALISTAIR DARLING:
Well I don’t quite see it that way. I’ve always said that at the end of the day it is up to the Prime Minister who he wants as his Chancellor. Now all of us can have our good days and our bad days and of course Gordon and I have some very robust exchanges, as you’ve just said. I can’t imagine any healthy relationship between a Prime Minister and a Chancellor where they don’t have differences of opinion from time to time. What unites us though is we’re both committed to the same end goal, of getting ourselves through this recession, getting through to recovery and helping this country do the best it possibly can so of course people have their ups and downs and all of us can be guilty from time to time of saying things or doing things that perhaps in the cold light of day we shouldn’t.
JEFF RANDALL:
I think we all understand robust dialogue and we would expect that but for instance, in the summer of 2008 when you gave that famous interview to a newspaper and you said this is going to be the worst recession for 60 years, weren’t you bullied by the Prime Minister to retract that? Didn’t he try to get you to go back and say it’s not going to be like that?
ALISTAIR DARLING:
No, I remember the conversation with him very well and I was a bit annoyed because the story had sort of spun away from what I originally said and both of us agreed that what had not been got across is that I had said we were certainly in for a very profound and deep recession …
JEFF RANDALL:
And you were right and he was wrong.
ALISTAIR DARLING:
Yes, but I also said that other countries would be there as well. But look, every relationship between politicians, especially between number Ten and Eleven, of course there are going to be differences from time to time but I always take this view, of course there’s been some bad days but actually there have been rather more good days than there have been bad days and I’d say the two of us, there’s more than unites us than will ever divide us I think.
JEFF RANDALL:
There are bad days and then there are dodgy days. After that famous interview the attack dogs were sent out against you, we all know who they are, Damien McBride, Charlie Wheelan and they had a right pop at you behind your back in the press. Are you saying that that wasn’t subtle bullying?
ALISTAIR DARLING:
Look, nobody likes that sort of briefing that goes on but I’ve been around long enough, you pick these things out very quickly and the one thing you learn about briefing is that at least one other person knows you’ve done it so it soon enough gets out but frankly …
JEFF RANDALL:
But you were being briefed against weren’t you? You admit that?
ALISTAIR DARLING:
Of course there were people saying things but frankly my best answer for them is the fact that I’m still here, one of them is not.
JEFF RANDALL:
Ain’t that the truth. Now just on a personal note really, that fruity comment attributed to the delightful Mrs Darling when she realised that you were being stitched up, true or false?
ALISTAIR DARLING:
Well I haven’t heard Margaret using that sort of language but when you go through a thing like that, I remember the weekend after we came back and I’d done this interview and the forces of hell were unleashed …
JEFF RANDALL:
By Number Ten?
ALISTAIR DARLING:
Not just them, the Tories as well. The Tories jumped on to the bandwagon as ever and they all tried to join in and of course it’s difficult, especially for the Chancellor. If you’re in politics you have to be thick skinned I think to an extent. Of course you are not immune from the fact that you wish people hadn’t said things or you hadn’t done things but frankly, when I look back at the three years I’ve been Chancellor, okay it was a weekend you could have done without but there was far more important things …
JEFF RANDALL:
But what a lot of people will not understand is this. Why would the Prime Minister and his henchmen brief against you, one, for telling the truth and two, for being right?
ALISTAIR DARLING:
I do not know why the briefers if you like did what they did, one day maybe they’ll explain. What I do know is that yes, unfortunately, and it’s not a great source of pleasure, what I said did turn out to be true as we well know but what is important is yes, you have your ups and downs, yes you have your differences of opinion and a lot of people had different views right at the start of the recession as to exactly what we were going into. The important thing is did we get it right in sorting it out, are we getting it right now and making sure we have got through to recovery and are we making it clear that there is a choice that faces people – but we are going to come on to that no doubt in the rest of the interview – as to which of the two major political parties have got a clear view of what will be in the future.
1. Journalism.co.uk celebrates the success of the Politics Cymru blog.
Most government agencies, such as the CSA for child support and HMRC for tax credits, have dedicated MPs’ hotlines. For those who know the system, going to see your MP has become a way of fast-tracking your case. As a result, a whole bureaucracy has emerged to service MPs servicing constituents.
And MPs encourage this. They know that the more direct the contact with constituents, the higher the chances of electoral success. This is good — it makes MPs work hard all year round; but the downside is having a huge, negative impact on our parliamentary democracy.
While our focus remains so resolutely in the constituency, we are spending less and less time in Westminster doing the scrutiny and the holding to account. Even when we are in London, we tend to be organising constituency campaigns and finding ways to raise parochial concerns.
We are leaving ourselves no time for ideas and thoughts. We are hollowing out our politics. Where is the ideology in getting the CSA to chase a non-resident parent for payments? We need to show people how to use agencies that are there to serve them. Not do it all for them.
But we are moving in totally the wrong direction. I don’t know how many times I hear people demanding a more consensual style of politics, asking us to put aside political affiliations and work for the good of the people that elected them. This is only making it worse.
After the expenses scandal, this view has become even more dominant. Yet the vast majority of us were elected only because we stood for a political party. In fact, Parliament is predicated on the very existence of political parties. It’s how we organise ourselves.
But our system breaks down when our political parties are not ideologically distinct. Today, we define our differences by dividing lines. We ask a small group of people — a focus group — what they care about, and then ask them what they want us to do about it. That’s not politics. That’s marketing. It’s turning us into admen and PR agents.
The politics of focus groups makes politicians reactive. We should lead, persuade and inspire. We should argue for what we think is right, even if popular opinion is against us. Leadership is about taking risks, even if that means losing our positions as a result.
Politics and politicians need to encourage big ideas and promote different ways of organising our society. Parliament should be a forum for clashing ideas again. And politicians need to rediscover that being an MP is about more than doing a job. It’s about being in a privileged position to put into practice deeply held beliefs and ideas.
When we debate parliamentary reform this week, we need to talk about getting back to first principles. Papering over the cracks won’t do any more. We need to tear down the flock wallpaper and fix the plasterwork underneath.
Click on image to enlargeHere is what Iain Dale has to say about Claire Ward, the Labour MP for Watford who featured in a steamy News of the World story a few years ago which related to some incidents which took place during a visit by members of the Parliamentary Armed Forces Scheme, including myself, to Kosovo. On that occasion she behaved like a slapper and lied about it afterwards. After the story appeared a Labour Party press officer rang me to say that she was suing the paper and could I confirm that it was all rubbish. No I could not, I said, and what was more if it came to court they had better not call me as a witness (which I was) because I wasn't going to lie under oath. Long silence on the other end of the phone. No libel action against the Screws. Anyway, here is Dale on Ward:
I do not think it is over the top to call Claire Ward a liar. Hopefully she will get her comeuppance in a few weeks and will lose her seat.
For him rather strong language.
This is from a Mary Ann Sieghart column in The Times. I think it is fair to say that John Prescott got more than he bargained for.
It's not every day that the Deputy Prime Minister announces himself to you as a buffoon. This was just weeks after the 7/7 terrorist attacks and John Prescott was - supposedly - running the country while Tony Blair was away. I had written a column headlined “Prezza the buffoon should simply not be left in charge”, which asked why we indulged him when he was so blisteringly incompetent.
The next day, my phone rang. “I have the Deputy Prime Minister for you,” said a female voice. “It's your buffoon here,” came a more familiar male one. He harangued me for half an hour, saying that what I'd written was “bloody disgraceful” and that I was just a snob. “I'm crap at syntax,” he conceded finally. “I don't even know what the word means.” Then he demanded that I come in and see him.
That turned into the encounter that Prescott referred to on Tuesday in his Radio 4 On the Ropes interview with John Humphrys. I haven't written about it before, because I respected Prescott's right to talk to me off the record. Now that he has brought it up himself, though, I can at last tell the tale.
Signing in at Admiralty House, I heard a click-clack on the marble floor behind me. It was Prescott. I turned round to greet him, but he sailed past, saying gruffly to the security man, “She's with me”. At the lift I caught up with him, smiled and put out my hand, as you do. He scowled and refused to shake it.
He took me up to his vast office and let me stew there for 15 minutes until he came back with a couple of lackeys and a briefing file on me an inch thick. I knew his people had been asking questions about me. In a voluntary capacity, I was then vice-chair of a local regeneration programme, North Fulham NDC, which came under his department. A very senior official had e-mailed the programme director asking how committed I was, what decisions I had taken, which projects I had opposed. Prescott was clearly looking for ammo.
He launched into a tirade. His face reddened, his finger jabbed, he held up dog-eared pamphlets that he had written in the 1980s which apparently proved that he had a good brain. He boasted about his achievements in transport and local government, some of which I disputed. Once he began on regeneration, I asked whether he had managed to dig any dirt up about me on the NDC. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he blustered.
“I think you do,” I retorted. “Your officials have been asking questions about me and you've got a chapter heading there on your briefing pack: ‘Mary Ann Sieghart's involvement with North Fulham NDC'.”
Luckily it was close enough for me to read upside down. Caught red-handed, he pretended not to be able to find the right page. More bragging followed, until he demanded: “So admit it. You were wrong about me.” Given his emotional state, I thought it wise to be diplomatic. I said I was glad to have had the chance to hear his side of the story. “Why don't we leave it at that?” I suggested.
“No,” he said. “I want you to admit that you're wrong.” He was determined to bully me, and I was determined to resist.
“I'm not prepared to,” I replied. “I'm afraid you haven't persuaded me.”
“Right then,” he shouted. “I want you to justify every single word you wrote.”
“Are you quite sure?” I checked. This was going to be embarrassing. So I took a deep breath and began. “Well, you punched a voter and you stuck two fingers up in Downing Street. That shows that you lose your rag too easily - as evidenced today, in fact.”
“AS EVIDENCED TODAY?” he bellowed, his face by now beetroot, his fists clenched.
“Yes, I've been talking perfectly calmly while you've been shouting and jabbing your finger at me. I don't think that's appropriate behaviour in a Deputy Prime Minister.”
My column had gone on to disparage his performance at Prime Minister's Questions. “I know PMQs are very hard,” I admitted. “I'd be useless at them. But then I'm not Deputy Prime Minister and you are.”
The final straw was his inability to string a sentence together. “I've not had the fine education you had,” was his justification. “You're just a snob.”
“I'm not,” I retorted. “I have no problem with Alan Johnson or John Reid or David Blunkett. They all come from disadvantaged backgrounds, they didn't go to private schools and they still manage to articulate what they want to say. It's nothing to do with snobbery and nothing to do with your education.” If a man couldn't speak clearly, I said, it was a sign that he couldn't think clearly either.
That was when he finally lost it. “So what you're saying is I'm too thick to be Deputy Prime Minister?” he yelled at me.
His two apparatchiks stiffened. “Well, yes, I guess I am,” I said in a small voice.
On the pavement outside, I found myself shaking. I couldn't believe what I had just said to Prescott, but nor could I believe how bullyingly he had behaved.
He, meanwhile, raced off to No 10 to see Blair. I later heard that he said, “I've just had that Mary Ann Sieghart in”, to which Blair replied, “That's nice”. “No it wasn't,” said Prescott, still furious. “She told me I was too thick to be Deputy Prime Minister.” Blair did the worst possible thing and laughed. “Well, she's not the only one who thinks that,” he chuckled.
Oh well, at least he didn't hit her. Or try to [that's enough - ed]
Over the last three weeks I have tweeted rather disparaging things about the MPs involved in the Tower Block of Commons. I thought it was a ludicrous programme, deliberately designed to make politicians look stupid and out of touch. Indeed, I suggested to my partner that if I ever showed any sign of considering taking part in such a programme, I should be shot.1. Capitalists@Work thinks it is Mandelson who is the bully.
All are in Labour seats apart from the East of England one:
Leeds (UKTI, Press Release, 22 February 2010).
· Arla Foods (link), Leeds Central – Hilary Benn (Lab).
Newcastle (UKTI, Press Release, 22 February 2010).
· Tech Mahindra (link), Jarrow - Stephen Hepburn (Lab).
· Nissan – (link), Houghton & Washington East, Frank Kemp (Lab).
· Lotte Chemicals UK (link and link), Recar, Vera Baird QC (Lab).
Warwick (UKTI, Press Release, 22 February 2010).
· PelicanCorp (link), Warwick and Leamington - James Plaskitt (Lab).
Edinburgh (UKTI, Press Release, 22 February 2010).
· ICON plc (link), Edinburgh South West, Rt. Hon. Alistair Darling (Lab).
'The general criteria we would agree with is that the person applying for the pass should be a proper journalist with a track record of journalism; that they should be operating for a respectable news organisation or website with a reasonably large number of subscribers or viewers; and that they should be using the pass for the purposes of journalism, rather than coming in and commenting on stuff.'
PRESCOTT: Yes, Brown has rages but that's all they are.
BROWN: And we all know what happens when you lose your temper, don't we?
PRESCOTT (fuming): Very clever remark from a smart arse journalist.
JOHN PRESCOTT relentlessly pursued his Civil Service secretary from the very first day she began working for him, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. New extracts from diaries kept by Tracey Temple disclose how Mr Prescott repeatedly made advances towards her, despite her attempts to rebuff him, and how he even flirted with her in front of Ministerial colleagues. She describes in detail how the Deputy Prime Minister was 'eyeing her up' when they met for the first time the day after Labour's 2001 General Election victory.
And just five days later she confessed she felt uncomfortable about the way Mr Prescott continually looked at her. The diary entries, published today in The Mail on Sunday, reveal how, after months of ogling, Mr Prescott attempted to force her on to the bed of his luxurious grace-and-favour London flat.
She had gone there along with Joe Irvin, Mr Prescott's then special adviser, as Mr Prescott was supposed to be working on a crucial speech to be delivered at the Labour Party conference. But as soon as Mr Irvin left, the Deputy Prime Minister made his move.
The diaries detail how Mr Prescott intimately touched his £26,000 a-year secretary as they sat in the back of his chauffeur-driven Government Jaguar and how he enjoyed 'dirty' conversations while she sat at her Whitehall desk...
...Legal experts said last night that had Ms Temple chosen to make a formal complaint about the Deputy Prime Minister's approaches, they would have amounted to sexual harassment. This can constitute any form of unwelcome sexual advance in an office or workplace and includes unwelcome joking, leering and making inappropriate comments as well as physical advances.
Until 2001, the onus was upon individuals bringing actions to prove that they were harassed.
But then new regulations introduced by Labour shifted the burden of proof. Employers are now required to demonstrate that the actions did not constitute sexual harassment.
Am I being bullied?
* Bullies may use terror tactics, open aggression, threats, shouting, abuse, and obscenities towards their target
* Bullies may subject their target to constant humiliation or ridicule, belittling their efforts, often in front of others
* Bullies may subject their target to excessive supervision, monitoring everything they do and being excessively critical about minor things
* Bullies may take the credit for other people's work but never take the blame when things go wrong
* Bullies may constantly override the person's authority
* Bullies may remove whole areas of work responsibility from the person, reducing their job to routine tasks that are well below their skills and capabilities
* Bullies may set the person what they know to be impossible objectives, or constantly change the work remit without telling the person, and then criticise or reprimand the person for not meeting their demands
* Bullies may ostracise and marginalise their target, dealing with the person only through a third party, excluding the person from discussions, decisions etc
* Bullies may spread malicious rumours about the individual
The claim of routine bullying was today backed up a senior former adviser to Brown in No 10, who told the Guardian: "His intense bouts of anger are unremarkable to anyone who has worked closely with him. You just have to put up with this stuff. It is part of the daily experience, almost part of the furniture. He would behave in that way constantly. He suffers from a massive paranoia and an inability to accept blame, yet he runs a blame culture that allows him to blame others. He does not seek to win an argument, he just seeks to bully. If you have not worked closely with him before, it is truly shocking"
