Management lessons from Ramsay and Blair

I always had Gordon Ramsay down as a superannuated Sunday Supplement wanker. Tonight I saw the first of his Kitchen Nightmares on Channel 4, in which he was parachuted into Silsdon in Yorkshire to fix the unfixable – a diabolical restaurant/bar called Bonaparte’s. Inevitably, he failed, and Bonaparte’s was shuttered by the end of the show. Along the way, though, Ramsay showed himself to be a sensitive and passionate manager with a genuine understanding of people. I wouldn’t like to work for him, though…

Meanwhile, our Prime Minister continues to provide management lessons of his own. Anyone who’s ever run a company will tell you that sooner or later you’re going to come to work one morning and get a sick feeling when you realise that some malignant subset of the crowd of sweaty herberts you hired (out of the goodness of your heart) has taken over your precious company – or at least plans to do so (or at least thinks they could do so if they felt like it). Peace of mind drains away, replaced by stomach-churning paranoia. The worm has turned. It must be like this for Blair right now. He’s still nominally in charge and there’s really no prospect of a coup before the next election but the cabal has formed and the ink is drying on the tawdry conspiracy that’ll see him replaced. It’s just a matter of time now.

Managing his Government, party and increasingly treasonous cabinet through this period while attempting to sell the utterly unsalable European Constitutional Treaty to a sceptical and ignorant public in the teeth of a hostile press is going to be the biggest test of his career and will make Iraq look like a walk in the park.