The Scottish Secretary, understated in his public utterances, “often makes the wittiest interjections in Cabinet discussions”.
Unless Ministers get more grown-up in their rhetoric, they are going to set expectations at a level they cannot and should not meet.
It’s a masterpiece of establishment prose and I offer a translation for our readers.
He is a Gulliver tied down by Lilluputian ropes. The figures scampering about his mighty frame grow bolder – tweaking a cord here, tighening a knot there.
Our political constitution rightly puts our representatives, not the permanent bureaucracy, in the driving seat.