GORDON Brown was under pressure yesterday, after it emerged that his violent temper forced cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell to launch an investigation.
Whitehall’s most powerful civil servant is said to have reprimanded Brown early on in his premiership, after Downing Street staff said they were being bullied.
The revelations are detailed in political journalist Andrew Rawnsley’s latest book, which was serialised in the Observer newspaper yesterday.
Rawnsley claims that Brown grabbed one aide by the lapels of his jacket before screaming at him, and that he thumped the back of the passenger seat in his chauffeur-driven car so hard that a bodyguard was scared.
Downing Street yesterday dismissed the allegations as “malicious rumours”, but Rawnsley said he had “24 carat” sources.
