It seems ministers are “quietly ignoring” the Conservatives’ rule that civil servants should be in the office three days a week. It’s not much to ask for a nice, safe job and pension provision that the rest of us can only hanker after. But nope. Labour, once the party of the workers, is now the party of the workers from home. Ministers are taking a “less dogmatic” attitude to asking civil servants to turn up at all.
And chief of the ministers who are terrifically chilled about it all is Jonathan Reynolds, Business Secretary, who yesterday attacked the culture of “presenteeism”. Look, it’s called turning up for work. But then Mr Reynolds hasn’t really operated in an environment where it matters all that much if he turns up at all. After graduating in 2001, he worked for Stockport council as an assistant to Labour councillors, then as parliamentary assistant to an MP before finally making it to Labour’s national executive committee. What’s in that glittering CV, do you think, that make the PM think that this is just the man to feel the pulse of the business community?
