SHE has become Whitehall’s answer to Belle de Jour, the anonymous call girl blogger whose sexual exploits spawned a bestseller and prompted a prime time television show.

The Civil Serf - as she calls herself - claims to be a 33-year-old fast-stream civil servant ready to expose the daily chaos of the Labour government machine while lampooning ministers and highlighting the idiocy of mandarin colleagues. There are also moans about drunken advances from the opposite sex.

The blogger claims that Alistair Darling is desperate to use his first budget on Wednesday to garner “a cheap headline” even if means announcing unaffordable new measures. She also has a dig at Gordon Brown, calling him “Velcro” because of the way negative stories have a habit of sticking to him - unlike “Teflon” Tony Blair.

Although the blog has not been authenticated, Whitehall insiders believe it to be credible and have started an inquiry to establish her identity.

The blog reports on rows in the run up to this week’s budget, claiming that the Treasury accused her departmental bosses of trying to “diddle them out of money while delivering less”.

She also puts her own spin on what might be in Darling’s budget: “High up on the list will be both child poverty and incapacity benefit. On these issues the little ‘p’ politics between my director-general and our private office has reached fever pitch with one accusing the other of scaremongering about spiralling costs. I’m getting restricted e-mails, night-time meetings and all sorts of other shenanigans.”

The Civil Serf is scathing about Whitehall’s culture of long meetings. “I’ve received a meeting request that probably deserves a mention in the Guinness Book of Records,” she writes. “It is for something called the ‘People Action Team’ (don’t ask) and it is scheduled to last for a staggering seven hours . . . Truly there is no God.”

The blogger also reveals a civil servant’s view of ministers’ custom of taking home red boxes with official papers. “Ministers only take decisions at the weekend (probably because they have their spouse and/or political adviser to do it for them).”

Even Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, is not spared - she accuses him of hypocrisy for criticising the leadership in the Treasury: “I think we are forgetting something Gus - you were the permanent secretary of the Treasury until two years ago? Most of your decisions contribute directly to this current crisis.”

The blogger began posting her musings last November, initially giving only a few clues to her identity: “Fortunately for you I’m just senior enough in my department to really know what’s going on.

“Fortunately for me I’m not senior enough to attract suspicion from my blogging.”

Over the past four months her increasingly indiscreet posts may have provided enough clues for her to be tracked down.

References to Peter Hain, the former work and pensions secretary, and to incapacity benefit policy and child poverty, suggest that she might work at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). She also discloses dates and venues of specific meetings she has attended. (“I was trapped in a conference in Brighton being chased about by some bloke from the Foreign Office who wouldn't listen to me saying I’m engaged - yuk!”) A DWP source said that while no one had yet been disciplined there were “suspicions” about the blogger’s identity. A spokesman said: “Civil servants are expected to abide by the civil service code of conduct.” In a profession which still prides itself on its discretion, the Civil Serf, if caught, will be lucky to keep her job. Her most recent post last week suggests that she knows her blog’s days may numbered. “Knowing my luck it’ll get me fired,” she wrote.

Anonymity not guaranteed

The internet has proved far from reliable for bloggers trying to hide their identity.

Zoe Margolis, a film assistant, was uncovered in 2006 as the author of Girl with a One-Track Mind, a sexually explicit internet diary written under the pseudonym Abby Lee.

Catherine Sanderson, 35, a British woman living in Paris, was sacked by her employers after they worked out that she was the author of Petite Anglaise, a blog documenting her experiences as an unmarried mother.

Others whose tell-all writings have brought them down include Venetia Thompson, 23, a broker who was suspended by her City employer Cantor Fitzgerald this month after writing in a magazine about the alcohol-fuelled excesses of some of her colleagues.

Read the Civil Serf blog

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