David Cameron and the Civil Service - it's bound to end in tears...

No, they don't look like that any more

And so, rather earlier than I might have predicted, David Cameron has lost patience with the bureaucracy. And like Tony Blair, it is clear that he doesn't really get it.

What do I mean by that? Simple, if you really want to overcome years of administrative inertia, you need to bring the Civil Service with you. By attacking the senior ranks, the very people who will give the instructions to the likes of me, you make it all the more likely that they will be unenthusiastic. And to change, you really need enthusiasm.

But it's about much more than being nice to bureaucrats. Firstly, the Civil Service implements all of that legislation that you, and your predecessors, want to introduce. There's an awful lot of it out there, some good, some bad, much of it complex or obscure. As the Coalition have discovered, taking an axe to the red tape risks discovering that you've lost something important or, perhaps more salient, something that the Daily Mail won't like.

Morale is an issue too. Pay freezes, job losses, office closures, none of these are likely to earn an administration any friends. There is no new blood, because you aren't recruiting any, and your senior civil servants are increasingly politicised. Worst of all, on the frontline, there is a sense that junior staff are being stifled by 'this week's initiative', whatever programme has been devised to make it look as though things are getting better. If you're interested, Dave, it won't.

And yet, you could make it all so much better. Work out what government is for, what you want it to do, then look at the relevant legislation. Do we need to do this any more? Is the cost of monitoring, regulation and supervision worth the price tag, or would we be better off trusting to a little common sense? No, that isn't an excuse to slash health and safety legislation, by the way.

Now I come to mention it, is the production of all of those statistics that nobody believes worth the candle? It's all very well saying that 76% of this believes that, or that 82% of something is dealt with within 32 days, but if the general response is "Oh, really? Pull the other one...", you've wasted your effort. Actually, public perception is a reasonably good judge of performance.

Finally, a word to the wise. Long after you're gone, Dave, we'll still be here, dealing with the consequences of your actions, and those of your Government. We know that, and some of my more cynical, senior colleagues know it only too well. If you like, we're part of your legacy. And you want one of those, don't you...