Employees at high-end consultancy Teneo Blue Rubicon were surprised to receive an email from CEO Gordon Tempest-Hay kicking up a stink about recent office antics. The boss puts staff on notice to clean up their behaviour after a series of recent drunken incidents. Culminating in someone – “I can’t put this any less bluntly” – doing a poo in the office shower:

Subject: Office etiquette

I’m well aware that what follows only applies to a small percentage of us but as I don’t know exactly who that small % is and, as things are getting out of hand, it’s time for a word. Over the few weeks, we have had:

• Someone get drunk and throw up over the carpet (they’ve apologised, but still)
• Someone – I can’t put this any less bluntly – poo in the shower
• Someone mess their underwear and leave it for the cleaner
• A Friday bar getting completely out of hand akin to a drinking competition for a bunch of clubbing teens

Not only are these things inappropriate for a workplace but it is totally unacceptable to expect our lovely cleaning lady to clear up the resultant mess.

Please treat this place properly or we’ll have to withdraw the showers and stop the bar.

G

Guido thought he would do some of the dirty work and assist them in identifying some possible culprits. Could it be:

• Sir Craig Oliver, former Direct of Communications to David Cameron, now a Principal at Teneo. Did have a big week celebrating his 50th birthday…
• Lord Hague of Richmond, former Tory leader and Foreign Secretary, now a Senior Advisor to Teneo. Soiled his Eurosceptic credentials in the referendum…
• Sir Martin Donnelly, former Permanent Secretary at BIS and the Department for International Trade, also now a Senior Advisor to Teneo. Has dropped a few stinkers recently…

Hopefully that will help them get to the bottom of the matter as quickly as possible…

Anti-Brexit bias runs like a spinal cord through the bloated body of civil servants and ex-mandarins that make up Whitehall. This group of metropolitan remainers – whose fat pensions are funded by the taxpayer – are an influence network which has been regularly accused of trying to hamper Brexit. Many of them have seats in the House of Lords. Last night every living former Cabinet Secretary voted against the government on the customs union. A Guido probe reveals the extent to which former top civil servants share anti-Brexit views…

Let’s start with Lord David Hannay, formerly Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the European Economic Community. He tarred all Leave voters with the same brush, calling them “feckless” during a Parliamentary debate last year. That’s 17,410,742 voters dismissed…

Lord Robin Butler – Cabinet Secretary for a decade under Thatcher, Major and Blair, loudly and publicly opposes Brexit. He claims leaving the EU:

“Strikes a dagger to my soul… The United Kingdom being motivated by an illusory quest for independence, in a world which becomes more interdependent day by day, is a painful prospect.”

Sir John Kerr – former Permanent Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office (a particular hotbed of remain sentiment) – wants Article 50 reversed and believes the UK should accept a subordinate position to the EU:

“At any stage we can change our minds if we want to… we can remember that an Article 50 notification can always be withdrawn… in the end, we will basically come to heel.”

Lord Sir Nick MacPherson, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury for more than a decade, suggested stopping Article 50, even if it demands a change of government:

“Lord Kerr drafted Art. 50 and entirely right that Brexit can be halted at any time. Odds are against but all governments’ lives are finite.”

Lord Ricketts, former Permanent Under Secretary of State of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, denied that the EU intends to create its own army despite evidence to the contrary:

“I think we can be completely relaxed about the prospect of a European army; it is never going to happen.”

Former Head of the Civil Service Lord Kerslake – often deployed by Corbynistas as a policy ally – says there is “no upside” to Brexit:

“The challenge here, and I’ll be very direct about this – from my perspective there is no upside [to Brexit]. This is about damage limitation. And we’re working in a situation where policy has not been properly settled.”

Sir Martin Donnelly – Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Trade until last year, prefers a food analogy. He compared leaving the Customs Union to sign trade deals with other countries to:

“Giving up a three-course meal now in favour of the promise of a packet of crisps”

And let’s not forget Lord Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary from 2005-2015, who publicly campaigned for ‘remain’. Faced with the legacy of this gang of Brussels-loving Sir Humprheys, no wonder Brexiteers think Whitehall is working against them…

Former Department for International Trade permanent secretary Martin Donnelly’s anti-Brexit speech today has been seized upon by Remainers and given top billing by the Today programme. Donnelly’s latest whinge is nothing new – he essentially says this morning that we should stay in the single market and customs union, just as he did three months ago. Not that that’s stopping the BBC and Remain media from treating it as new information. The more pertinent question is how on earth did someone who thinks we should stay in the customs union end up in charge of a department the whole point of which is to sign trade deals outside the customs union? 

The reaction on Whitehall this morning is more one of rolled eyes than surprise. A former Eurocrat, Donnelly was never rated, neither by ministers nor Jeremy Heywood. Indeed they tried to push him out repeatedly pre-referendum before he finally took a knighthood and left. Donnelly tells you all you need to know about the civil service being stuffed full of Remainers trying to undermine the process… hardly helpful for his former colleagues.

The public pronouncements of former top civil servants liberated from office tell you all you need to know about how Whitehall is stuffed full of ultra-Remainers opposing Brexit. Sir Martin Donnelly was Permanent Secretary for the Department of International Trade until last year. He has just written an article for InFacts, the mad pro-EU spin shop. InFacts‘ own website makes clear on its homepage that it wants to ‘Stop Brexit’. Does Donnelly agree with this? A very odd forum for a mandarin in charge of a department directly involved in delivering Brexit. 

In his article Donnelly paints a very pessimistic picture of what would happen if the UK leaves the single market – i.e. Brexit. He has form on this, in November he said we should join the EEA. Donnelly then talks about the problems that would arise “if” the UK leaves the customs union. Eh? This man was in charge of the Department for International Trade. The whole point of his department is to sign trade deals outside the customs union. Did he not believe the UK would be leaving the customs union when he was perm sec? How did he ever get the job?