John McEnroe, the tennis champion of the early 80’s, famously said that he thought it was perfectly normal to lose his temper and rage at officials when there were millions of dollars at stake. To him players who were completely controlled on court were the weirdoes.

I’m entirely with Mr McEnroe on this. Passionless people who go though life without getting upset seem more than a little odd - whether in sport, work or anything else worth caring about.

So when I read that our Prime Minister gets angry, refuses to suffer fools, yells at people, throws things and gets grumpy I am reassured that there is, in fact, a human being in Number 10 after all. Besides, this isn’t just doing the washing up we are on about here, it’s running the country: matters of world importance: financial crises, schools and hospitals, war and peace, serious stuff - things that you want the Prime Minister to get steamed up about.

The ‘revelations’ in Observer Journalist Andrew Rawnsley’s book, The End of the Party will be believable to anyone who has ever had a serious conversation with the Prime Minister and just as much so of some of the people around him.

Now all sorts of media types have gone into hypocrisy overdrive on what is and what isn’t acceptable at work. Television has glorified the ‘tough uncompromising boss’ for as long as I can remember in fiction and increasingly in ‘reality’. Whether it’s Alan Sugar, Gordon Ramsey, Dragon’s Den - we don’t seem to be able to get enough of the bosses bawling out their underlings and being generally unpleasant to staff for our entertainment. These people are leaders to be looked up to. Uncompromising characters who get results.

It’s a cliché, of course, but there is at least an acceptance in the private sector that sometimes it is necessary to leave staff in no doubt where they stand and to tell them what their job is and when they are getting it wrong.

But move to the public sector and it is a different game entirely. Managers are expected to be tolerant to the last, to watch employees who take liberties with taxpayers’ money and who fail to do their jobs and carry on as if it doesn’t matter. Managers appointed to turn around services that are failing, which often requires pruning the roses somewhat, have their positions undermined and the key card that is played is that of ‘workplace bullying’. I’ve seen it happen in both the Councils on which I served where senior management have folded in the face of accusations that would be considered pathetic in most private businesses. Nothing changes and the public loses every time.

Call me unreasonable, but sometimes eggs have to be broken to make an omelette. That’s not to advocate management by fear but workplaces are not democracies and neither should they be. Some people need to toughen up a bit. I never cease to be amazed that people might think when they take a job in a place like 10 Downing Street that it is going to be just like any other workplace.

Sometimes life at work is tough. Since the appropriately named head of a workplace bullying charity has found herself being publicly disembowelled in the broadcast media she may be reflecting on the irony of having put herself in a situation for which she was manifestly ill equipped.

It was nonetheless unwise for the Prime Minister’s ‘people’ flatly to deny Mr Rawnsley’s allegations. This was just asking for trouble. Whether these things affect how people vote who can tell, but I thought we are electing someone to run the country, not to run the Tufty Club.