The charity at the centre of the Downing Street bullying scandal reopens today after raising serious questions over the Prime Minister’s suitability to lead the country.

Bullying in any capacity is vile but it has to be asked that in the work place, especially one as high pressure as Downing Street, is there a fine line between bullying and being an irate boss?

Gordon Brown is accused of shouting at his staff and shoving them aside, and while nobody can condone this, what exactly did these so called victims of Mr Brown expect when accepting jobs in Downing Street? Is it conceivable that they went into the role without having considered the high pressure environment that would naturally exist in such a place?

Now, I don’t want to seem callous, I have been the victim of the aforementioned shouting and shoving and I know that it can be thoroughly upsetting (I should point out now this was while waitressing in a restaurant a VERY long time ago and not in the lovely WEPR offices). However, if restaurant bosses and head chefs can get so worked up about an overdone steak what would they be like facing economic meltdown and bomb threats?

Surely if you work in an environment such as Downing Street you must expect that the atmosphere will occasionally lead to angry outbursts. Why is Gordon Brown facing this media scrutiny when another famous Gordon, Chef Ramsey, can say what he likes to his staff without a national bullying charity singling him out for criticism?

The problem is that Gordon Brown is an easy target. Despite shedding the occasional tear to Piers Morgan and having a very popular, media-savvy wife, he can seem cold and aloof and claims like this just stick too easily.

You can’t imagine someone making similar allegations about the silky smooth Blair, but I would hazard a guess that around 9/11 or 7/7 he wasn’t above the odd outburst. Personally, I wouldn’t have relished the thought of having worked in Downing Street in the Thatcher era either. The nickname the ‘Iron Lady’ hardly conjures up images of a boss to confide in, does it?

On a serious note, it must be awful to feel like a victim in your own workplace and if people do feel that they are they are being treated unfairly they should contact organisations like the National Bullying Helpline. However, it might be worth changing your boss’s name, just in case...

Katherine Williams-Davies, account manager

The Sun newspaper made its own headlines this week with the announcement to ditch Labour in the run up to the next general election. So should Gordon Brown really be worried?

Many political commentators see this as a massive blow for a Labour party already suffering in the polls believing that The Sun has the power to swing public opinion towards one party or another. But, can the opinion of one newspaper, even if it has the largest circulation in the country, really affect the outcome of a whole general election?

Certainly in 1992 and 1997 The Sun claimed that they had played an important part in first the defeat and then the victory of the Labour party. Famously, in 1992 they showed their colours with the headline, “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain turn the lights out”. In 1997, they announced their about face with the declaration, “The Sun backs Blair” just before the party’s landslide victory in May.

However, can it truly be said that The Sun sets public opinion or would it be more appropriate to say that it is led by it? Surely, a newspaper’s main aim is to sell papers. Therefore, they are unlikely to try and alienate the majority of their readers by going against their political feelings.

A potentially telling sign is the fact that The Sun’s announcement came a day after Ipsos Mori announced that their latest opinion poll had seen Labour drop into third place with 24% of the vote behind the Conservative’s 36% and the Liberal Democrat’s 25%. This would indicate that Labour is already in a pretty weak position.

If history is an indicator, Gordon Brown should perhaps be a little worried. While a newspaper, especially with today’s declining readership figures, may not be capable of swaying the opinion of a nation, The Sun, like rats off a sinking ship, knows when a battle is already lost. In Gordon’s own words, "It is people that decide elections, not newspapers” and it seems The Sun believes the people already have.

- Katherine Williams-Davies, Account Manager