The Sunday Times today writes about expensive Sunningdale courses for civil servants on how to comport themselves and look nice.

The case for the defence? A spokesman for the school said: “Many senior politicians have had training in how they present themselves, right back to Margaret Thatcher and Bill Clinton. Senior executives have training in how to use their voice and presence, so why not senior civil servants?

Answer? Because, fathead, this is obviously not an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money.

However…

… there is a problem here. 

Over my own long years in the Civil Service I witnessed a real decline in the standards of dress and, for lack of a better word, attitude.

Sorry, former colleagues, but it has to be said. See eg the way too many British officials look when they roam overseas: ill-fitting clothes hanging clumsily over ill-fitting bodies, uncleaned shoes, haircuts delivered by visually challenged hairdressers, and so on. The collective lack of stylefulness is terrific.

Contrast this with the look and bounce of colleagues in Polish, Serbian and even post-war Bosnian Ministries: on less money they manage to convey a sense of professional pride and associated smartness.

Part of the problem is that in fact our civil servants are in fact struggling to make ends meet on low salaries and high costs of living. Something suffers, and it includes clothes/style.

But it is not just that. There is a deeper attitudinal problem. An undefinable but real enough collective sense of … tiredness. Some sort of inarticulated glum indifference. A crass pseudo-PoMo pride in not being proud, in having nothing to be proud about, even in dissing the very notion of pride as boring/irrelevant.

Gimmicks such as ‘dress down Friday’ make things worse. In the USA this means Smart Casual, with plenty of Smart. In the UK civil service it just means scruffy.

And it starts spreading to the rest of the week. Line managers these days are wary of hauling in a junior colleague to tell him/her to smarten up. Could such action lead to Floods of Tears? Procedures for harassment/bullying or somesuch?

Or merely a dreary ennervating unwinnable row about how an out-of-touch ‘establishment’ is once again trying to impose ‘old-fashioned values’?

So standards arising from pride – and pride arising from standards – drift forlornly down, desiccated leaves zig-zagging to earth in a chill autumn breeze.

Task One for the next Government. Take Presentation Seriously.

Dump these courses. Sack those responsible for setting them up. Ban image consultants and professional executive coaches and all that other prissy rubbish from entering any government building.

Instead set a firm new professional dress code for all civil servants, with Ministers and their offices setting a tip-top example. Launch a blitz on tidying and cleaning government offices from top to bottom. Take down all signs attached to walls/doors by sellotape.

Anyone who does not like it can just leave.