Metropolitan police wants to argue in secret to obtain access to reporters' notebooks.
Metropolitan police wants to establish its right to argue in secret to obtain access to reporters’ notebooks. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Roll up, roll up. It's secrecy Super Tuesday. In keeping with the spirit of the times, we should perhaps keep mum, but people will insist that we live in a free society. And so it is that as MPs today quiz the Guardian's editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, about our publication of the Edward Snowden revelations, the Metropolitan police will be elsewhere trying to establish its right to more secret hearings. As part of a continuing entanglement with Sky News, the Met wants to establish its right to argue in secret to obtain access to reporters' notebooks. Its ability to argue in "closed session" was denied by the high court. Now it is taking the matter to the supreme court hoping for a more favourable judgment. It isn't just the Big Brother government that one has to worry about. It's also his pesky cousins.

Real tragedy in Glasgow at the weekend, garnering the blanket coverage one rightly expects. But as a consequence, much less attention was paid to the verdict of the former cabinet secretary Lord Butler, who offered the BBC his view on the administrative qualities of our ruling coalition. Francis Maude, cabinet office minister with the brief to drive the civil service to distraction, recently called for mandarins to "speak truth to power". Why would they, asked Lord Butler, when civil servants were being hung out to dry in public? "People are not encouraged to speak truth to power when in the same breath in the same interview they are told that they will be dumped on when things go wrong. I'm sorry to say, I really think that Mr Maude and some of his colleagues don't understand leadership." Quite a thing to see Sir Humphrey bare his teeth.

How might coalition top bods show a bit more leadership? The odd gesture wouldn't hurt. In the publication Tribune and on his blog, the indefatigable David Hencke tells of the behind-the-scenes controversy concerning the Student Loans Company, whose last boss, Ed Lester, had his tenure blighted by a public row about his tax arrangements. "The Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents Whitehall's lowest paid, put forward a rather interesting negotiating ploy for 2014," explains Hencke. They suggested that his successor forgo a £25,000-a-year bonus on top of his £160,000 salary and taxable expenses of £30,000 a year. "Instead it suggested that the bonus be redistributed to the staff, benefiting the lowest paid." It would have contributed to a good new deal. "All 2,400 staff could get an increase of more than £600 incorporated into their salaries. The few very lowest paid would get a £960 pay rise to take them up to the nationally recognised living wage." The Cabinet office said nyet apparently. Trickledown be damned.

Unsurprising perhaps, for this is the way of things. The uber rich do very nicely, thank you – and the poor, they have their food banks. Hencke ends his tale with a vignette. "I was behind a well-paid young couple in Berkhamsted Waitrose at the butchery counter who were ordering fillet steak – not for their own dinner, but to feed their dog. The complacent man boasted that he wouldn't normally be at Waitrose because he regularly got the fillet steak for the dog at Harrods food hall." Poor Fido, no one escapes austerity.

Yes, leadership is definitely an issue, and not just in Whitehall. Each day brings fresh evidence that the right hand has no clue what the left is doing. Emily Thornberry QC, the shadow attorney general, has a continuing interest in the colossal cock-up at the Serious Fraud Office which led to secret info and the names of witnesses in a past investigation involving fighter jets and BAE Systems being sent to the wrong address. The bundles ended up in a building that was also being used as a cannabis farm. The government is trying to recover the material. How's that going, she asked. "The SFO has recovered 98% of the data – this includes all audio tapes and electronic media. The SFO continues to pursue the recovery of outstanding material," replied solicitor general Oliver Heald QC last week. They're doing their very best. Worrying, isn't it?

Twitter: @hugh_muir