Rawnsley has sexed up his own book

Sue Cameron, FT Whitehall watcher, enters the fray over that book.  First, she has some more on Churchill:

Sir Winston Churchill could be difficult. He didn’t turf them off their chairs but he did sometimes hand them his false teeth so they always took hankies with them when they went to take his typing. Oh - and hats. When they were in the car with the great man he often allowed his budgie to fly round the vehicle and the only way to save their hair from the wretched budgie’s droppings was to wear a hat.

Now, we come to the nitty gritty:

It was back in November 2007 in the FT’s Notebook that I broke the story of how moody Gordon Brown had been “tearing strips ” off the Number 10 garden girls and had then turfed one of them off her chair and started typing himself.

Most of the other nationals followed it up at the time and now Andrew Rawnsley is recycling it again along with other stories of GB shouting at people, kicking the furniture etc.

Yes, it’s all getting rather repetitive.

On the inquiry that Cameron has called for:

There is no chance whatever of anyone launching any formal inquiries - daft to even think it.

Now to the important bit:

The cabinet office is strenuously denying that Sir Gus gave GB a verbal warning about his bullying. Well of course Sir Gus would not have done anything so crass!

Would he have had a quiet, oh-so- tactful word about the best way of er… getting things done, prime minister? You bet.

Which is a million miles away from what Rawnsley is alleging. 

He has been rather uneconomical with the truth.