Stephen Kelly

And I thought, well, I don't want to do that.

So I sort of went to Peter and a couple of other people who had worked in the civil service and said, what can you tell me?

What's the lessons you learned?

And he said, interestingly, he said,

Civil service, Stephen, is like an infinite wall, infinitely high, infinitely wide.

And someone like you, but just because your energy is going to every day wake up seven o'clock, you'll go in there and you'll bang, running, sprinting and smash into that wall.

Fall crumpled on a heap.

And then you'll dust yourself up and you'll think, no, you never fail.

Failure is not an option.

Next day, you'll do exactly the same thing and you'll keep doing this.

And then you realise if you keep doing it and you keep talking sense and keep doing the right things, eventually that wall has doors and windows, but they only open from the inside.

So you have to be invited in.

So I'll tell you one of the sort of guerrilla stories.

In the first two weeks, I had meetings with Treasury colleagues, and I was based in both Whitehall, 70 Whitehall and Horse Guards.

And the meeting was at the Scottish office, which is right at the almost Trafalgar end of Trafalgar Square end.

And then I got sent up there, went to the meeting.

No one there.

And then I found that the meeting had been rescheduled down the other end of Whitehall.

So I missed it.

And I went back to my, everybody has private offices.