Most civil servants don’t earn very much money. According to their union the PCS a quarter of the civil service was earning less than £15,500 in 2007. That’s better than the minimum wage but not by much, and after ten years of a Labour government. So if a political figure wanted to get indignant about scandalous levels of pay low wages would be the issue to pick on.

Not Gordon Brown. He’s announced today that the “culture of excess must change and will change.” His ostensible and unconvincing target is the relatively tiny group of public sector workers who earn more than £150 000 a year even though comparable jobs in the private sector probably attract rather higher salaries. The BBC’s spin on this was that Downing Street is going to “name and shame” the highest earners. The odd thing about this is that many of these salaries would have been rubber stamped by the same people responsible for naming and shaming. Their paradox not ours.

He’s also planning to make "efficiency savings" of £12bn over four years. £3bn seems like an awful lot of inefficiency and suggests a Civil Service working at the pace of a medieval scriptorium. Why can’t he just come out and say “we’re going to cut a lot of public services but the Tories would chop an awful lot more”? At least it would be transparent.

There are a couple of political conclusions that come from this. The first is that there will be significant attacks on the public sector next year and organising resistance in the unions has to start immediately. In many cases, like UNISON, that will require a fight with pro-Labour bureaucrats too. The second is that bunkering down and focussing exclusively, or almost exclusively on getting Labour re-elected is not sufficient. It has to be supplemented by getting as many left of Labour candidates elected as possible and maximising the vote of those credible challengers who may become part of a political opposition to what’s round the corner.